Iran president: Any agreement must remove all anti-Iran sanctions
Iranian President Ebrahim Raeisi says any possible agreement between Iran and the P4+1 group of countries in the Austrian capital of Vienna must include the removal of all sanctions, the provision of valid guarantees and cessation of political issues and claims.
The Iranian president made the remarks in a phone conversation with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron on Saturday as the two sides discussed the latest status of the ongoing talks in Vienna between Tehran and the five remaining signatories to the 2015 Iran deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), aim to secure the revival of the agreement.
Raeisi said the Iranian negotiating team has repeatedly announced that it welcomes the initiatives that would guarantee the provision and protection of the nation's rights.
He added that certain "political pressures or claims have been made with the aim of maintaining the leverage of pressure on the Iranian nation which undermine the prospect of reaching an agreement [in Vienna]."
The United States left the Iran deal in 2018 and began to implement what it called the “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions against the Islamic Republic, depriving the country of the economic benefits of the agreement, including the removal of sanctions, for which Iran had agreed to certain caps on its nuclear activities.
In the meantime, the other parties to the deal, in particular France, Britain and Germany, only paid lip service to safeguarding Iran’s economic dividends as promised under the JCPOA, prompting Iran – after an entire year of “strategic patience” – to reduce its nuclear obligations in a legal move under the deal.
The Vienna talks began last April on the assumption that the US, under the Joe Biden administration, is willing to repeal the so-called maximum pressure policy pursued by former President Donald Trump.
Tehran says it will not settle for anything less than the removal of all US sanctions in a verifiable manner. It also wants guarantees that Washington would not abandon the agreement again.
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