TEHRAN – Presidential chief of staff Mahmoud Vaezi has said he cannot reveal the details of the phone conversation between President Hassan Rouhani and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, which took place on Saturday night and lasted for two hours.

In a televised interview on Saturday night, a few hours after the Rouhani-Macron phone talk, Vaezi said the conversation focused on banking, economic and political issues and the two sides are waiting for results, Mehr reported.

According to reports, Rouhani and Macron discussed the prospects of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers which the U.S. scrapped last year.

“Fulfilling the commitments by all parties [to the JCPOA] and guaranteeing the security of free shipping in all waterways, including the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, are two of Iran’s major goals in the ongoing negotiations,” Rouhani told his French counterpart.

Macron warned that the failure of the JCPOA will embolden many hardliners in the world stage, adding that “we must look for a solution to secure our mutual interests, and in this regard, France will pursue solving political and economic problems on the way of dealing with Iran and resolve tensions.”

Over the last few weeks, the French government has launched an initiative and held talks with both Iran and the U.S. to reduce the tensions.

Following the recent G7 summit in Paris, Macron said that G7 leaders had agreed to a joint action on Iran with the aim of defusing tensions and opening a new round of negotiations with Tehran.

“We agreed on what we wanted to say jointly on Iran,” Reuters quoted Macron as saying. “There is a message from the G7 on our objectives and the fact that we share them is important, which avoids divisions that in the end weaken everybody.”

Meanwhile, Tehran has ruled out the possibility of meeting for meeting’s sake, or as President Rouhani put it, for “photo ops”.

“We seek to resolve issues and problems in a rational way but we are not after photo ops. For anyone wanting to take a picture with Hassan Rouhani, this is not possible” unless that party chooses to set aside all the oppressive sanctions and respect the Iranian nation’s rights, Rouhani said last week.

MH/