Iran Shrugs Off Congress View on Deadline for Nuclear Deal
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iran’s foreign minister and the country's chief nuclear negotiator Mohammad Javad Zarif stressed on Sunday that Tehran does not care about a deadline the US Congress has set for a nuclear agreement on Tehran’s peaceful nuclear program.
“We do not care about the (US) Congress deadline. We agreed in Vienna to achieve only solutions until the end of March, not the comprehensive deal,” Zarif told reporters on board a flight en route to Switzerland’s Lausanne for a fresh round of nuclear talks.
The top Iranian diplomat also dismissed the notion of two separate agreements on details and generalities.
“At any circumstances, we should reach an agreement on all details. The next step will be drafting the text of the agreement, but it does not mean that we will have general and detailed deals,” Zarif explained.
He said the new round of talks in Switzerland will include technical issues, noting that Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) are “very close to the solutions.”
Zarif also noted that a final deal is “certainly within reach” in the new round of talks if the other side has the necessary political will.
He further expressed the hope that a recent letter the US Republican senators wrote in defiance of a possible final nuclear deal would not undermine the other negotiating side.
Back on March 9, a group of 47 Republican senators wrote an open letter to the Iranian government, warning that any nuclear deal Iran signs with US President Barack Obama's administration won’t last after Obama leaves office.
Iran and the group of six countries are in talks to hammer out a final agreement to end more than a decade of impasse over Tehran’s nuclear energy program.