TEHRAN – Iran will not renegotiate the 2015 nuclear deal and that the U.S. must lift all sanctions it imposed on Iran since 2018, Majid Takht Ravanchi, Iran’s ambassador to the UN, said in an interview with ISNA on Tuesday.

“Our positions are clear; they (U.S.) should completely lift sanctions. If they do so, we will return to our commitments. We should not be in a rush to achieve this…. It was determined within the JCPOA that, which sanctions must be lifted. We want [the U.S.] to exactly implement that. We don’t want anything more or less than that,” Takht Ravanchi said. “We will neither allow the JCPOA to be renegotiated nor will we allow anything to be added to it.”

He also said that the U.S. should not set any conditions for its return to the Iran nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

“We should see what will happen. But it’s important that the U.S. decision to return to the JCPOA should not be made with conditions or ifs and buts. The U.S. should not set any conditions for implementing [the JCPOA]. Given their bad track record, Americans should show that they are honest,” said Takht Ravanchi, a former nuclear negotiator.

He also said that Iran will not accept any U.S. effort to lift nuclear-related sanctions and keep terrorism-related ones because the nuclear sanctions were reimposed by the Trump administration under counterterrorism authorities.

“Iran’s Central Bank was under nuclear-related sanctions at first but after Trump withdrew from the JCPOA, he imposed terrorism-related sanctions on the Central Bank, a move that we consider as cheating. We will not accept any effort to lift nuclear sanctions on the Central Bank while keeping terrorism-related sanctions in place,” Takht Ravanchi pointed out.

SM/PA