Iran to Stay in Vienna Talks to Reach A Strong Deal: Shamkhani
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iran won’t bow out of the Vienna negotiations on the revival of the JCPOA and will continue pursuing a strong agreement, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani said.
“All pillars of the Iranian state - in spite of all external and internal hype - work hard to preserve and advance Iran's national interests,” Shamkhani said in a tweet on Monday.
“We will remain in the Vienna Talks until we reach a ‘strong agreement’ that meets all our legal and logical demands,” he added.
Iran and the remaining participants to the JCPOA have been holding talks in Vienna since April last year with the aim of reviving the deal by bringing the US into full compliance.
The US left the JCPOA in May 2018 under former president Donald Trump. The Vienna talks began on a promise by Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, to rejoin the deal and repeal the so-called maximum pressure campaign against Iran. Biden, however, has so far failed to undo Trump’s own undoing of Barack Obama’s Iran policy, which led to the JCPOA in June 2015.
The eighth round of the Vienna talks began on December 27 with a focus on the removal of all sanctions that the United States had imposed on Iran after its unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA. The US is not allowed to directly attend the talks due to its pullout in 2018 from the deal with Iran.