Tehran, SAEDNEWS: “Voices from the US [governing body] show that there is no coherence in the country to make political decisions in the direction of advancement in the Vienna Talks,” Shamkhani wrote in on his twitter page on Wednesday.
“The US administration cannot pay for its internal disputes by violating Iran’s legal rights,” he added.
Voices from the US government show that there is no coherence in the country to make political decisions in the direction of advancement in the #ViennaTalks. The US administration can not pay for its internal disputes by violating #Iran's legal rights.
— علی شمخانی (@alishamkhani_ir) February 9, 2022
In a letter to US President Joe Biden on Monday, a group of 33 Republican senators led by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said any deal with Iran on restoring the JCPOA requires Senate approval.
The senators warned Biden that they will do everything in their power to block a possible deal if he moves forward without them.
They warned that the “implementation of any agreement will be severely, if not terminally, hampered” if the Biden administration does not fulfill a range of obligations in relation to Congressional oversight over any agreement.
Any deal that does not have Senate approval, they continued, would be “subject to being reversed” as soon as there is a new president.
In May 2019, following a year of strategic patience, Iran decided to let go of some of the restrictions on its nuclear energy program, resorting to its legal rights under the JCPOA, which grants a party the right to suspend its contractual commitments in case of a non-performance by the other side.
The administration of US President Joe Biden says it is willing to compensate for Trump’s mistake and rejoin the deal, but it has retained the sanctions as leverage.
Envoys from Iran and the G4+1 group of countries — Britain, France, Russia, and China plus Germany — have been holding negotiations in the Austrian capital for 10 months in a bid to resurrect the JCPOA.
The eighth round of the talks resumed on Tuesday after a brief pause during which the negotiators returned to their capitals for consultations.
Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani warned on Monday that the Vienna talks between Iran and the world powers may not end up in a deal if the US remains adamant to removing all cruel sanctions imposed on Tehran under the maximum pressure campaign.
"The agenda for the Iranian negotiators to continue the eighth round of Vienna Talks has been carefully defined. An agreement in which the sanctions that form the maximum pressure are not lifted will condition the country's economy and cannot be the basis of a good deal," Shamkhani wrote on his twitter page.
Reports said earlier this month that the Biden administration has restored a nuclear cooperation sanctions waiver to Iran, a senior State Department official said.
The waiver, which was rescinded by the Trump administration in May 2020, had allowed Russian, Chinese and European companies to carry out non-proliferation work at Iranian nuclear sites.
The move came as Iran has been requesting removal of economic sanctions.
Shamkhani reacted to the news by saying that Iran has the right to a peaceful nuclear program.
“Iran’s legal right to continue research and development and to maintain its peaceful nuclear capabilities and achievements, along with its security against supported evils, cannot be restricted by any agreement,” he tweeted.
Iranian senior analyst Seyed Mostafa Khoshcheshm also discredited the US move, describing it as a deceitful measure aimed at prioritizing nuclear debates over economic sanctions in the Vienna talks.
In a reply tweet to a post left by the Russian representative at the Vienna negotiations, Mikhail Ulyanov who had welcomed the US waivers as a step forward, Khoshcheshm said the US continues its game against Iran and its recent move shouldn't be interpreted as softening tone.
No, it's just a deceitful move to:
- shift #ViennaTalks to nuclear issues while Iran's priority is removal of ECONOMIC SANCTIONS
- claim goodwill to advance US blame game
- affect Iran's markets through a wrong pulse
&
all for nothing, given Iran parliament's Strategic Action Law https://t.co/ahgiGcFhDY— S.M.Khoshcheshm (@khoshcheshm) February 5, 2022
Meantime, Iranian Government Spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi said earlier this month that his country does not accept lifting of the US embargos just on paper and all of them should be removed in practice.
Sanctions are not going to be removed just on paper, because, such issue happened in the previous administration of the country in a way that the then governor of Central Bank of Iran (CBI) had acknowledged that “almost nothing” had been gained as a result of the negotiation of the former administration of the country under President Rouhani, Bahadori Jahromi said.
Iran says success of Vienna talks hinges on getting ‘right answer’ from West
