Alghadeer TV Alghadeer TV
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian says by Monday midnight, the country will provide the European Union’s coordinator in the talks on the 2015 deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), with its final conclusion on the bloc’s plan for revival of the deal.
“We have not offered our final conclusion [on the EU coordinator’s plan for revival of the JCPOA] to the opposite side yet. We will relay our final conclusion on the outstanding issues to the EU coordinator in writing by midnight today to see what feedback it will have and what reaction the US will show,” Amir-Abdollahian said in remarks on Monday.
Iran’s top diplomat said if the US shows a realistic and flexible reaction to Iran’s offer, “we would be at the point of agreement,” adding, “The American side has orally agreed to two proposals offered by Iran.”
“However, the US … wants to get more concessions [from Iran] and does not show flexibility. We must talk more and those parties that are trying to get our positions closer should [try to] get the Americans closer to our logical viewpoints,” Amir-Abdollahian said.
He added that it is the US turn to show flexibility due to its internal problems, saying that Washington’s oral acceptance of the two Iranian offers “must turn into a text and it must show flexibility on one issue.”
“The upcoming days are important days,” the Iranian foreign minister emphasized, saying Tehran is ready to reach a conclusion through a foreign ministerial meeting and announce the final agreement if its view is accepted.
“It is the country’s decision that if our red lines are respected, we will have no problem with reaching an agreement. One of the reasons for the prolongation [of the JCPOA revival talks] is that we don’t want to cross [our] red lines,” he pointed out.
The United States only seeks to solve its own problems “but we do not want to finalize an agreement and then see that our red lines have not been observed. Something [good] must happen in the [Iranian] people’s lives [through any possible agreement].”
Four days of Vienna talks between representatives of Iran and the five remaining parties to the JCPOA to salvage the deal culminated on August 8 with a modified text on the table.
The Vienna talks resumed on August 4 after several months of impasse, and expert-level negotiations were held between Iran and the P4+1 group of countries.
While the European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell claimed the “final text” had been reached, Iran emphasized it has conveyed its “initial response and reservations” on the draft text.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Amir-Abdollahian said the country was determined “not to tie the Vienna negotiations to people’s livelihood, so we did not want to present an emotional agenda to the country; we wanted to show the real negotiations to the people.”
The JCPOA is the outcome of months of efforts by Iran’s Foreign Ministry which “can also have many flaws as a document but what concerns us is verification which must be conducted,” Amir-Abdollahian said.
Iran and the remaining parties to the JCPOA — Russia, China, France, Britain, and Germany — started talks in the Austrian capital of Vienna in April last year. While the parties noted progress in multiple rounds of talks, the indecisiveness shown by Washington has prevented any significant breakthrough.
Last month, the negotiations were hosted in the Qatari capital of Doha in a different format, with Tehran and Washington holding indirect talks mediated by the European Union. Those talks also failed to produce any tangible result due to the excessive demands of the US.
Iran’s President Ebrahim Raeisi said on Friday that the Islamic Republic would neither leave the negotiating table with the P4+1 group of countries on the JCPOA revival nor tie its progress to the accord.
“We will seriously address Iran’s economic and cultural circumstances regardless of the path the [JCPOA revival] negotiations take and what will happen in the future,” Raeisi said in the southeastern Iranian province of Kerman.
