Nuclear Deal at Hand if Other Side Resolved: Iran's President


TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday that a lasting nuclear agreement between Tehran and world powers is within reach provided that the other side shows the necessary determination.

“With the final deal, which will be possible within the upcoming months if the other side has serious will, the conditions for production in Iran will become much better,” President Rouhani said in an address to a gathering of Iranian workers in Tehran on Tuesday.

He also dismissed the notion that his administration’s first priority is to resolve the standoff over the country’s nuclear energy program, noting that settlement of the nuclear case is only “the first step” in resolving fundamental problems.

Rouhani said the main purpose of the nuclear talks is to deal with two major hardships the enemies have inflicted on Iran, namely the allegations of non-civilian nuclear activities and the subsequent sanctions imposed on Iran.

“We want to prove to the world that the ill-wishers lied to the world. Iran seeks peaceful (nuclear) technology, not making destructive bomb which is forbidden under the Supreme Leader’s fatwa,” the president underlined.

He also pointed to a possible end to the anti-Iran sanctions, and called on the profiteers of the sanctions regime to think of another job.

“Nobody in the world can keep putting pressure on Iran and imposing sanctions on it in the next months and years,” Rouhani added.

Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) are in talks to hammer out a lasting accord that would end more than a decade of impasse over Tehran's peaceful nuclear program.

On April 2, the two sides reached a framework nuclear agreement after more than a week of intensive negotiations in Lausanne, Switzerland, with both sides committed to push for a final deal until the end of June.

They are scheduled to press ahead with drafting the text of the long-awaited accord in New York on Wednesday.