LONDON, January 28. /TASS/. The US needs to earn Tehran’s trust to resume negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said.
"The situation is different and much more difficult than the previous time. Lots of things should be done by the other side to buy our confidence," Araghchi pointed out in an interview with Sky News. "We haven’t heard anything but nice words, and this is obviously not enough," the top Iranian diplomat added.
According to him, the Iranian authorities are ready to listen to what US President Donald Trump has to say, but additional efforts will have to be made to persuade Tehran to engage in negotiations on a new nuclear deal, given the fate of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
The Axios news website reported on January 24 that Trump’s Special Envoy for the Middle East Steven Witkoff had been put in charge of diplomatic contact with Iran. According to the media outlet, the new US president’s decision to task his special envoy with working on relations with Iran demonstrates his intention to make another Iran nuclear deal before considering military options to put pressure on the country.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal, was signed by Iran, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (Russia, the United Kingdom, China, the United States, and France) and Germany in 2015. The United States withdrew from the agreement in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump and re-imposed the sanctions on Iran that had been lifted in accordance with the JCPOA. Russia, China, the United Kingdom, Germany, the US, and France launched talks with Iran in April 2021, seeking to restore the JCPOA in its original form, but the negotiations ended without result in 2022.