ANKARA, January 19. /TASS/. Tehran is ready to return to negotiations on the nuclear deal if the US adopts a realistic approach and no preconditions are set, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in an interview with Turkey’s TRT World TV channel on Thursday.
"We have approached the final stages of the agreement several times. However, the US occasionally raises some questions or excuses at the last moment. Take, for instance, the climax of protests in Iran. On the one hand, the Americans were sending us messages saying they were ready for the final stages of the deal-making process. They also said that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was not a priority for the US, while the riots in Iran and the situation in Iran were. I then stated that the Americans should clarify their position on the messages they have been sending us via official channels and the contradictory comments they make in the media," the Iranian top diplomat pointed out.
He noted that "via diplomatic channels, the Americans insist on the need to make a deal and Tehran is ready to reach a final conclusion in the process without preconditions." "We are ready to take the final steps as part of the previous talks but without preconditions and with a realistic approach [on behalf of the US] in order to protect the rights and advance the national interests of Iran. In any case, we are committed to the path of diplomacy. We believe that talks for the sake of talks produce no results," Amir-Abdollahian noted.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier that "the JCPOA was not currently on the table."
The five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany struck a nuclear deal with Iran in 2015 to address the crisis over its nuclear program. The previous President of the United States, Donald Trump, withdrew from the agreement in 2018. The current American leader, Joe Biden, has repeatedly signaled he is willing to bring the US back into the nuclear deal. Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany, China, the US and France have been in talks with Iran in Vienna since April 2021, seeking to restore the JCPOA in its original form. However, Biden admitted in November at a closed-door meeting with Democratic activists that the Iran nuclear deal was actually dead but Washington had no plans to make that position public. A video of the meeting surfaced in December.