ByNews Desk- The Cradle
Tehran has fired back against reports that Washington, at the behest of Israel, is planning to propose an "interim deal" to lift just some economic sanctions
“All US sanctions must be removed in one go, effectively and verifiably” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told reporters.
On top of this, during a phone call with European Union Foreign Policy chief, Joseph Borrell, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said that Washington must provide guarantees that it will never again unilaterally leave the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
“There must be a serious and sufficient guarantee that the US, which is not trustworthy, will not leave the JCPOA again,” Amir-Abdollahian.
The comments were made just three days before Iran, the US and G4+1 countries are set to return to the Austrian capital for talks to revive the JCPOA. However, Iran has maintained that the upcoming talks will only focus on the lifting of US sanctions, not on further amendments to the 2015 deal.
On 17 November US news outlet Axios reported that Washington, at the behest of the Israeli government, is allegedly planning on proposing an interim deal instead of a permanent one in order to “buy more time.”
Under this proposed deal, the US and its allies pretend to release some frozen Iranian funds or provide sanctions waivers on humanitarian goods, instead of a full lifting of the sanctions.
The US under former President Donald Trump unilaterally and illegally abandoned the agreement in 2018. The Trump administration then unleashed a wave of punitive sanctions under a so called “maximum pressure” policy.
However, apart from harming Iran’s economy and negatively affecting the livelihoods of ordinary citizens, the policy failed to achieve much of its alleged objectives.
Meanwhile, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Baqeri-Kani has said the upcoming negotiations will also fail if the Biden administration refuses to lift the sanctions and provide guarantees that that future US administrations would not exit the deal.
In an interview with British news outlet The Independent on 25 November, Baqeri-Kani accused the Biden administration of failing to take any meaningful steps to return his administration to the deal despite his promises to do so.
Six rounds of talks have been held so far in Vienna to examine the possibility of the US rejoining the deal. Nothing meaningful has come out of those talks so far and in fact, the Biden administration has instead continued to impose new sanctions of Tehran.
The Iranian and US negotiation teams are not expected to meet face to face during the Vienna talks, but will instead communicate using messages to be delivered through the delegations of the other JCPOA signatories.
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