TEHRAN — Iran said
nuclear talks that are set to resume Monday in
Vienna should focus on lifting sanctions
on the Islamic republic and "guarantees" the US will return to the
fold.
اضافة اعلان
Negotiations to salvage the 2015 Iran
nuclear deal resumed in late November, after a five-month hiatus following the
election of ultraconservative Iran President
Ebrahim Raisi.
The talks seek to bring back the US, after
it withdrew from the accord in 2018 under then president
Donald Trump and began
imposing sanctions on Iran.
Iran has reported progress in the talks, but
European diplomats have warned they are "rapidly reaching the end of the
road".
US negotiator
Rob Malley has said there are
only "weeks" left to revive the deal, if the Islamic republic
continues its current pace of nuclear activities.
The talks are expected to get underway in
the Austrian capital at 6:00pm (1700 GMT), according to a source close to the
negotiations.
Ahead of the resumption, Iran's Foreign
Minister
Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said the agenda on Monday should be "the
issue of guarantees and verification" on the lifting of US sanctions if it
returns to the accord.
"The most important thing for us is to
reach a point where we can verify that Iranian oil will be sold easily and
without any limits, that the money for this oil will be transferred in foreign
currency to Iranian bank accounts, and that we will be able to benefit from all
the revenues," he said, quoted on Monday by state news agency IRNA.
The opening of the eighth round of the talks
involves delegations from Iran and the other countries that remain party to the
landmark accord — Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia.
The multilateral
nuclear deal reached in
2015 offered Iran a lifting of economic sanctions in return for strict curbs on
its nuclear activities.
The goal was to make it practically
impossible for Iran to build an atomic bomb, while allowing it to pursue a
civilian nuclear program.
But the deal started to unravel in 2018 when
the Trump administration pulled out and began imposing sanctions on the Islamic
republic.
US President
Joe Biden has said he is
willing to return to the deal as long as Iran also resumes the original terms.
'Positive message'
Iran, which denies it wants to acquire a
nuclear arsenal, has gradually abandoned its commitments to the accord since
2019, including by stepping up its enrichment of uranium.
The UN's nuclear watchdog, the
Internationa lAtomic Energy Agency, recently expressed concerns over Iran's growing stockpile
of highly-enriched uranium.
Iran's arch-rival Israel, which staunchly
opposes the nuclear deal, had reportedly warned in November that the Islamic
republic had taken the technical steps to prepare to enrich uranium to
military-grade levels of around 90 percent.
"Stopping Iran's nuclear program is the
primary challenge for Israeli foreign and security policy," Israel's
Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said on Monday.
"We prefer to act through international
cooperation, but if necessary, we will defend ourselves, by ourselves," he
added.
On Saturday, Atomic Energy Organization of
Iran director Mohammad Eslami said Tehran has no plans to enrich uranium beyond
60 percent, even if the
Vienna talks fail.
Eslami said the enrichment levels were
related to the needs of the country, in remarks published by the Russian news
agency RIA Novosti.
"Our targets related to enriching
uranium are meeting our industrial and production needs... and those of our
people," he was quoted as saying.
Asked whether Iran plans to enrich beyond 60
percent purity if the talks fail, he said "No".
Moscow's ambassador to the UN in Vienna,
Mikhail Ulyanov, welcomed that statement on Twitter, calling it "a
positive message".
In a tweet on Monday, Ulyanov said
delegations from
China, Iran and Russia met in the morning "to compare
notes" before the talks start.
"We advise all the participants in the
negotiations to come to Vienna with the will to obtain a good agreement,"
Iran's foreign affairs spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Monday.
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