DUBAI: Iran said on Monday that Tehran is ready to reach a “good deal” with world powers, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh told a televised news conference, blaming the US for stalling talks to revive their 2015 nuclear pact.
“Even today, we are ready to return to Vienna to reach a good deal if Washington fulfils its commitments,” Khatibzadeh said.
The nuclear pact seemed near revival in March but talks were thrown into disarray partly over whether the United States might remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which controls elite armed and intelligence forces that Washington accuses of a global terrorist campaign, from its Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list.
In 2018 then-US President Donald Trump reneged on the deal, under which Iran restrained its nuclear program in return for relief from economic sanctions, prompting Iran to begin violating its core nuclear limits about a year later.
Last week, the United States said it awaits a constructive response from Iran on reinstating the agreement without “extraneous” issues, a possible reference to Iran’s demand its Guards be dropped from a US terrorism list.
Weeks earlier, US Special Envoy for Iran had told a congressional panel that prospects for restoring the Iran nuclear agreement are “at best tenuous.”
“We do not have a deal with Iran and prospects for reaching one are, at best, tenuous,” Malley testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Malley all but confirms Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s announcement yesterday that US President Joe Biden has made a final decision to keep Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations list.
He explains that demands that go beyond the scope of the original nuclear deal would have to be met with reciprocal concessions by Iran which also fall outside the parameters of the 2015 JCPOA, such as an IRGC delisting. But since Iran has refused to make any such concessions, the US would not do so either, Malley says.
Malley is pushed by senators from both parties to reveal the administration’s Plan B if negotiations in Vienna fail at their objective of restoring the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
The special envoy largely dodges and avoids offering a timeline for when the US would walk away from the talks. He says the US would continue to negotiate “as long as the non-proliferations benefits of the deal are worth the sanctions relief that we would provide.” –Agencies
