TEHRAN – The Iranian foreign minister has said that talks between Iran and the remaining signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the JCPOA, have been largely documented in what’s known as the “September Document”. 

In an interview with the Etella’at newspaper published on Sunday, Hossein Amir Abdollahian said lots of discussions have taken place between Iran and the other parties regardless of the fact that some occurrences delayed any new agreements. 

Amir Abdollahian was commenting on the 2022 fall riots in Iran that according to some officials resulted in the death of tens of security personnel and civilians. 

“We were really close to reaching an agreement. Perhaps if the disturbances of last autumn had not occurred, we would have taken the final steps in reviving the JCPOA,” noted the top diplomat. 

The foreign minister also talked about how the West was wrong in its calculations last year. “The Americans and Europeans made a mistake in their analysis and thought that a coup had taken place in Iran and a new revolution had occurred. But the Americans realized sooner than the three European countries (Germany, England, and France) that this was not true, and that the provocations and media campaigns against Iran would not yield any results. Therefore, they quickly tried to return, even though they tried to take maximum advantage of this situation in their hostility towards us.”

Amir Abdollahian also accused the U.S. of hypocrisy, highlighting how Washington told the media outlets that it was no longer focused on reviving the JCPOA, while it sent contradictory messages to Iranian authorities. 

“Biden has sent several messages to tell us that he is serious about returning to the deal. We think Americans have not wisely used the time they had. They were wrong in their calculations of the Ukraine war and put forth baseless allegations that Iran had supplied drones to Russia. These allegations are completely false and they have never been able to prove them.”

He also added that the Sultan of Oman has put forward an initiative and that Iran has had indirect discussions with the Americans in the same regard.
The Iranian official insisted that Tehran would never deviate from the path of diplomacy.

JCPOA, the acronym for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was a deal struck between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council) and Germany in July 2015. The deal, endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 2231, limited Iran’s nuclear activities in return for termination of Western economic and financial sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

However, former U.S. president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the deal in 2018 and re-imposed sanctions on Iran. Tehran and the remaining signatories to the deal held several rounds of talks to revive the deal after Joe Biden took office, but to no avail. The negotiations came to a stall in September last year.

MHA/PA