TEHRAN: Iranian lawmakers have set conditions for the revival of a 2015 nuclear pact, including legal guarantees approved by the US Congress that Washington would not quit it, Iranian State media reported on Sunday.
Iran and the United States have engaged in indirect talks in Vienna over the past year to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement between Tehran and world powers which then-US President Donald Trump left in 2018 and Iran subsequently violated by ramping up its nuclear programme.
Negotiations have now stalled as Tehran and Washington blame each other for failing to take the necessary political decisions to settle the remaining issues.
Imposing such conditions at a crucial time could endanger a final agreement by restricting negotiators’ room to manoeuvre in the talks.
“The United States should give legal guarantees, approved by its … Congress, that it will not exit the pact again,” Iranian news agency quoted a statement signed by 250 lawmakers out of a total of 290.
The letter also said that under a revived pact the United States should not be able to “use pretexts to trigger the snapback mechanism”, under which sanctions on Iran would be immediately reinstated, the Iranian media reported.
The lawmakers also said that “sanctions lifted under the reinstated pact should not be reimposed and Iran should not be hit by new sanctions.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Sunday that US President Joe Biden should issue executive orders to lift some sanctions on Iran to show his goodwill towards reviving the nuclear pact.
Earlier on Saturday, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said Tehran would not give up its right to develop its nuclear industry for peaceful purposes, and all parties involved in talks to revive the 2015 nuclear accord should respect this.
Eleven months of indirect talks between Iran and the United States in Vienna have stalled as both sides say political decisions are required by Tehran and Washington to settle the remaining issues.
“For more than the one-hundredth time, our message from Tehran to Vienna is that we will not back off from the Iranian people’s nuclear rights… not even an iota,” state media quoted Raisi as saying in a speech marking Iran’s Nuclear Technology Day. Raisi reiterated Iran’s stand that its nuclear programme is solely for peaceful purposes. –Agencies
The United States is considering removing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from its foreign terrorist organisations (FTO) blacklist in return for Iranian assurances about reining in the elite force, Iranian and Western sources had said.
A senior administration official said President Joe Biden did not intend to remove the group from the terrorism designation, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who specialises in intelligence matters, reported on Friday.
