TEHRAN – Ali Bahadori Jahromi, the spokesman for Iran’s government, announced on Tuesday that Iran will be unveiling an important document on nuclear development next week.

The document will be announced by President Ebrahim Raisi on Saturday which marks Iran’s National Day of Nuclear Technology, the spokesman said.

Speaking at a press conference, Bahadori Jahromi said, “The comprehensive strategic document for the development of the country's nuclear power will be unveiled on the 20th of Farvardin (April 9) in a ceremony hosted by the Atomic Energy Organization and attended by the president.”

The spokesman did not give further detail, which comes amid a pause in the nuclear talks in Vienna. 

Mohammad Eslami, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), has recently stressed that global arrogance seeks to prevent Iran from achieving development.

In an interview with Al-Alam TV, Eslami pointed out that the United States had placed many obstacles in order to achieve this goal.

Eslami said, “There is a clear will and a serious effort by the arrogance, especially the United States of America and its allies, to prevent Iran from achieving development.”

Eslami added, “They seek by any means possible to achieve this goal, whether by placing obstacles, creating pretexts and providing false information. Therefore, the International Atomic Energy Agency usually searches for the information provided by them and conducts inspections to discover that this information is incorrect.”

Eslami explained, “In the framework of the nuclear agreement, Iran has accepted to reduce its nuclear activities and allow more international supervision of these activities in return for these countries lifting the ban on it.  Thus, trust is achieved between the two sides, so Iran has implemented its commitments in this field in accordance with the nuclear agreement, while these countries did not abide by their commitments and even used maximum pressure with the aim of eliminating the Islamic Republic, but what happened is that the Islamic Republic did not collapse, but on the contrary became more developed and advanced.”

Talks in Vienna over reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal have come to a standstill due to the Biden administration’s inability to make tough political decisions.

After a week of diplomatic blame-game between Russia and the West over who’s throwing a wrench into the Vienna talks, prospects for the imminent conclusion of the talks have become bleak due to Biden dithering over the last remaining issues.  

After the war in Ukraine broke out, the European negotiators in Vienna accused Russia of preventing the conclusion of the talks for fears that the possible resumption of Iran’s oil exports would make it easy to drive Russian oil and gas out of European markets.

Russia categorically rejected the accusation and, together with Iran, pointed the finger of the blame on Washington for refraining from making political decisions required for concluding the talks.

Iran says it has made all the tough decisions that are necessary for advancing the talks. Over the course of the talks, Iran provided innovative solutions to a number of thorny issues such as guarantees and verification measures. But the U.S. kept refusing the proposals all while refraining from coming up with innovative solutions.

In a recent phone conversation with United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian addressed the latest developments concerning the negotiations in Vienna. He told the world’s top diplomat that the U.S. needs to take action to help conclude the talks. 

While Iran says a deal in Vienna is imminent, the U.S. keeps dampening hopes for a deal. Amir Abdollahian told Guterres that the negotiations are about to result in a deal. “We are close to an agreement in the negotiations and we have conveyed our proposals on the remaining issues through the European Union’s top negotiator to the U.S. side, and the ball is now in the U.S. court,” he said.

The U.S., however, has a different assessment of the current state of play in Vienna. U.S. special envoy for Iran Robert Malley told CNN's Becky Anderson in Doha on March 27 that a nuclear deal “is not around the corner and is not inevitable” due to outstanding issues that “matter deeply” to parties involved in the talks, one of which is Tehran's demands regarding the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Iran has demanded that the U.S. remove the IRGC from its so-called Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) because, many in Iran and beyond, believe that the Trump administration’s decision to designate the IRGC as an FTO was mainly driven by a political motive to make it harder, if not impossible, for any future administration to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

During a phone call with Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi on Sunday, Amir Abdollahian slammed the U.S. for re-imposing sanctions on Iranian individuals and firms.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran is ready for a good and sustainable agreement, but so far the American side, by some of its excessive demands, has been directly responsible for the protraction of the talks,” the Iranian foreign minister remarked.

Negotiations have been underway since last April to resurrect the nuclear pact, which was abandoned by former U.S. President Donald Trump in May 2018.

The Iranian foreign minister blamed the pause in the Vienna talks on the U.S., saying that Washington is pursuing excessive demands. 

“If there is a pause in the course of the Vienna talks, it’s due to the American side’s excessive demands,” Amir Abdollahian said on Twitter on Monday. 

He underlined that Iran's Foreign Ministry acts “with power and logic” in order to secure the highest interests of the Iranian nation while observing the country's red lines.

The Iranian foreign minister said Tehran will never give in to U.S. excessive demands in the Vienna talks.

The top Iranian diplomat said Iran and the P4+1 group of countries can reach a final agreement in Vienna “if the White House behaves realistically,” Press TV reported.