Tehran, Sept 5: The current Iranian government will concentrate on the nuclear deal negotiations, but they should not be accompanied by new sanctions and pressure from the Western countries, Iranian President Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi said on Saturday.
“I stated earlier that the issue of talks will, of course, be central for our government, but not with the pressure that they [the Western countries] are applying [against Iran]. The talks will not succeed if they continue under duress,” Raisi said, as cited by the IRIB broadcaster.
In 2015, Iran signed the nuclear deal with the P5+1 group of countries, including the United States, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany and the European Union. It required Tehran to scale back its nuclear program and severely reduce its uranium reserves in exchange for sanctions relief, including the lifting of an arms embargo five years after the deal was inked.
In 2018, the US abandoned its conciliatory stance, withdrawing from the JCPOA and implementing hardline policies against Iran, prompting the latter to largely abandon its own obligations under the accord.
Since April of this year, the JCPOA joint commission has held sessions in Vienna, which also hosted several informal meetings designed to prevent the agreement from collapsing after Washington’s exit. The sixth round of discussions ended on June 20.
(UNI)
Follow our WhatsApp channel
