JCPOA Talks Should Be Based on Mutual Interests, Rights – Amir Abdollahian

By Staff, Agencies

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian slammed Washington for imposing anti-Iran sanctions while at the same time calling for talks with Tehran, stressing that negotiations on the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal should be based on “mutual interests and rights.”

“The White House calls for negotiations with Iran and claims to be ready to return to the JCPOA. Yet it simultaneously imposes new sanctions on Iranian individuals & entities,” Amir Abdollahian wrote in a post on Twitter on Tuesday.

“We are closely examining Mr. Biden's behavior,” Iran’s top diplomat added.

“The purpose of negotiations is not talking for the sake of talking, but to achieve tangible results on the basis of respect for mutual interests. The P4+1 [the remaining JCPOA members] should be ready for negotiations based on mutual interests & rights,” Amir Abdollahian explained.

On Friday, the US Treasury Department imposed a fresh round of sanctions on four individuals and two entities allegedly involved in promoting the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle [UAV] programs of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard [IRG] and its Quds Force, despite Washington’s claims to be serious in rejoining the nuclear deal and removing sanctions against the country.

On Monday, the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s spokesman said that if the US attends the talks on the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal with the right plan and abandons the policy of sanctions, an agreement on Washington’s return to the JCPOA and the termination of sanctions will be made immediately.

The US re-introduced the sanctions against Iran in 2018 after leaving the JCPOA, a historic nuclear agreement that had lifted the inhumane economic bans in return for some voluntary restrictions on Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy program.

Following a year of strategic patience, Iran resorted to its legal rights stipulated in Article 26 of the JCPOA, which grants a party the right to suspend its contractual commitments in case of non-compliance by other signatories and let go of some of the restrictions imposed on its nuclear energy program.

Iran and the remaining parties to the JCPOA have held six rounds of talks in Vienna, which began after the US administration of Joe Biden voiced a willingness to rejoin the nuclear agreement, to examine the prospect of the bans’ fresh removal.