MOSCOW, December 13. /TASS/. There are no grounds to think that any of the parties to the talks on the restoration of the Iran nuclear deal is seeking to drag out the process or has no political will to reach a practical result, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the Vienna-based international organizations Mikhail Ulyanov said on Monday.
"I see no reasons to think that any of the parties to the talks, including the Americans and Iranians, is playing any kind of a game. As a matter of fact, the political will exists to reach a concrete result," he said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel, commenting on the G7’s call on Iran to take the process seriously.
According to the Russian diplomat, it is important for the Americans to be sure that the Iranian nuclear program is under safe control, which has now been lost to a larger extent because of Washington’s policy of maximal pressure and Tehran’s response steps. "And it is important for the Iranians to have the sanctions lifted," he added.
Ulyanov noted that the Iranians are showing themselves "as quite serious negotiators" and the G7’s concerns stem from the lack of trust between the participants in the process If they [the Iranians] feel that there are flaws in their position that do not suit others - real flaws that can and should be corrected - they do so. They do it quickly and clearly," he added.
The seventh round of talks on the Iran nuclear deal and the lifting of the US anti-Iranian sanctions kicked off on November 29 to be suspended on December 3 when European participants returned to their countries for extra consultations. Another round was held in Vienna on Thursday. Tehran presented a draft agreement on the restoration of the nuclear deal in the format of two documents, one on the lifting of the US sanctions and the other one on its nuclear program. The US delegation is not taking part in direct talks with Iran and the Joint Commission meetings but participates in separate consultations with other signatories to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Actions (JCPOA) on the Iranian nuclear program.
The JCPOA, also known as the Iran nuclear deal, was signed between Iran, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (Russia, the United Kingdom, China, the United States and France) and Germany in 2015. Under the deal, Iran undertook to curb its nuclear activities and place them under the total control of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange for the abandonment of the sanctions imposed previously by the United Nations Security Council, the European Union and the United States over its nuclear program.
The future of the deal was called into question after the United States’ unilateral withdrawal in May 2018 and Washington’s unilateral oil export sanctions against Teheran. Iran argued that all the other participants, Europeans in the first place, were ignoring some of their own obligations in the economic sphere, thus making the deal in its current shape senseless. This said, it began to gradually scale down its commitments under the deal.