TEHRAN— Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian and his Omani counterpart Sayyid Badr Al-Busaidi discussed the latest developments in bilateral ties and also regional developments in a phone call on Friday.

The two sides also held consultations over the latest developments surrounding the talks to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the official name for the 2015 nuclear deal.

The phone call comes while the JCPOA talks have reached a stalemate.

In an interview with IRNA correspondent in New York published on Friday, Iran’s top diplomat stated that Washington’s response to the EU proposal was “interpretable” in many ways, and Tehran sought to “strengthen” the U.S. response. 

“We tried not to change the balance and the content. The framework of the agreement that we have should be maintained, but this text should have been strengthened by maintaining our red lines. One of the dimensions of this strengthening was ‘clarification’ so that when the text is published, 10 interpretations of a single text would not come out, but at least, the majority of the readers of that text should feel that they have a single understanding of that text.

Moreover, more important than that text for us is the implementation of agreements,” Amir Abdollahian clarified. 

However, U.S. Congressman Darrell Issa (Republican from California) told Washington Free Beacon, “Two weeks ago, they thought they had a deal, and now they know they don’t have a deal, and are stymied about how they get to a deal because they’ve negotiated all there was to negotiate, and, at the end of the day, Iran doesn’t want the deal that was negotiated.”

"I can confirm these comments," Issa's office confirmed to Sputnik when reached for comment. 

The U.S. has started the usual blame game, a tactic familiar to those who have been closely following the JCPOA revival negotiations for over a year and a half. 

Nonetheless, it is now clear that what Washington seeks is a deal that is beneficial only to them. What they fail to realize is that the process of negotiations is based on give and take. One can’t possibly imagine that an agreement is being between seven sides (Iran on one side and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council) Germany and the European Union on the other) and the text of that agreement only preserves a single party’s interests. That sort of thinking predates to medieval times. 

The latest status of the talks stands at this: There are differences remaining between Iran and the U.S. These differences are less than a hand’s fingers, but they are of utmost significance. Here is why.

There is a saying in Farsi that says, “A wise man won’t be bitten from the same hole twice.” It means that one should not experience the bitter things it has experienced before.

Therefore, Iran wants three things. First and foremost, Iran wants to put an end to the political claims made by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This is exactly what Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi told his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron when the two met in New York on the sidelines of the annual United Nations General Assembly.

According to Raisi, Macron sought to justify the political approach of the IAEA, but Raisi cited examples for him.

“First, sometimes the IAEA chiefs come to Tehran and after visiting our nuclear industry, they officially announce that there has been no deviation in Iran's nuclear activities, but as soon as they return to Europe, they are contacted by the Zionist regime. It is possible that their tone and rhetoric will change, which is a sign of a political approach to the issue,” the president told state TV on Wednesday. 

Raisi clarified that he had asked Macron why France is paying attention to the suspicions being raised against Iran's nuclear activities, but when the IAEA confirmed 15 times lack of deviation in the nuclear activities of the Islamic Republic of Iran, France didn’t take notice of that. 

The IAEA and Iran have been at loggerheads over the last year due to a safeguards probe initiated by the UN nuclear watchdog. The probe is centered on allegations stemming from Israel, a fierce opponent of the JCPOA. Israel has presented the IAEA with “information” that is claimed to have been stolen from Iran. Based on this information, the IAEA insisted on visiting a number of sites inside Iran. 

Iran fully cooperated with the IAEA in this regard. But the IAEA still demands more cooperation, something that Iran considers unacceptable because the IAEA requests in this regard are all built on Israeli allegations.

While the IAEA has sent a positive signal to resume dialogue with Iran, all the signs are indicating that Director General Rafael Grossi is ready to settle the issue, that is, if the Israelis allow him.

Tehran will remain steadfast on the path to diplomacy. That’s a given, and nobody can deny that. However, time is money! Iran cannot wait forever. If Washington wants to waste time by adding unnecessary additional explanations, Iran doesn’t have time for that.

“They took the text and, according to that text, in some clauses, added conditions and provided more explanations. In some cases that I cannot reveal the details, their additional explanation was exactly in conflict with the first two lines of the same paragraph. We tried to bring this to a point where everyone has a single understanding of this text, based on what was done in the exchange of messages between us and the American side with the coordination of the European Union,” Amir Abdollahian told IRNA. 

The second issue Iran wants is strong, verifiable guarantees that Washington won’t tear up the agreement again. However, the U.S. is sending signals that it cannot guarantee it. 

Robert Malley, the White House’s top negotiator for reviving the JCPOA, said Friday, “If a future president decides again recklessly to unilaterally withdraw from the deal at a time that the deal was working, if that's what they decide to do, there's nothing we, as in Biden, can do to stop that.”

“Without getting into sort of what our intelligence community would say I think at this point it doesn't appear that Iran has made a decision to acquire a nuclear weapon. It doesn't mean they're not expanding their program so they could be on the threshold of doing so,” he added. 

The U.S. is explicitly stating that it won’t guarantee that the future administration, which most probably will be a Republican one, will adhere to its commitments in case Tehran and Washington strike a deal. In other words, international law means nothing to them. 

In this regard, the foreign minister told IRNA, “This behavior of the Americans is not based on logic. They clearly state that what we agree is valid until the end of the Biden administration, and we will not give guarantees for the next administration. It is true that Mr. Biden's government is on our side today, but the ruling political system is established in each country. If any agreement is supposed to be operational and valid until the end of the administration that signed it, international law has no meaning at all.”