TEHRAN – Concluding the talks in Vienna over reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal appears to depend on the U.S.'s offering credible guarantees that it won’t back down on its commitment again.

Nearly three weeks ago, Iran gave a response to an American text submitted via the European Union’s coordinator for the Vienna talks, Josep Borrell. The response was the second in kind. Earlier, Borrell had put forth what he called a “final text.” Iran started studying the text immediately after receiving it. After a week of discussions, Iran submitted its response, which was relayed to Washington by the EU coordinator. Washington, in turn, responded to the Iranian response. And Iran again studied and submitted a second response which is yet to be responded to by the U.S.

The U.S. refrained from giving a clear response to the Iranian response and kept blaming Iran for broaching a number of issues, including the need for the U.S. to provide guarantees that it won’t renege on its commitments under a revived Iran deal. 

So far, the U.S. has refrained from giving such guarantees. And that seems to be the main reason why the Vienna talks have ground to a halt. 

Iranian President Ayatollah Seyed Ebrahim Raisi has made it clear that without guarantees there will be no deal. He made the remarks before heading to New York on Monday for high-level meetings during the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

“If it's a good deal and fair deal, we would be serious about reaching an agreement. It needs to be lasting. There needs to be guarantees. If there were a guarantee, then the Americans could not withdraw from the deal,” Ayatollah Raisi said in an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes.

He added, “We cannot trust the Americans because of the behavior that we have already seen from them. That is why if there is no guarantee, there is no trust.”

President Raisi further elaborated on the issue of guarantees in a separate interview with Al Jazeera. 

“In Vienna, we pursued the issue of lifting sanctions and of course emphasized that any agreement should be accompanied by a guarantee. The reason for demanding a guarantee is that the other side violated the agreement in the agreement, and now naturally there should be trust that they will not violate the agreement again; So guarantee is necessary,” he told Al Jazeera. 

President Raisi added, “Regarding the guarantees, if we have the trustworthy guarantees, and we have the lasting removal of the sanctions, not temporary removal of sanctions, and if there is a lasting solution for the safeguard issues, for sure it is possible to reach agreement. Now, it is the Americans who have to decide, because they were the ones who violated the treaty. They withdrew from JCPOA and now they have to decide to stick to their commitment.”

Responding to a question on the kind of guarantees acceptable to Iran, Ayatollah Raisi said, “The guarantees announced by the West should be reassuring for the Islamic Republic. You should give the Islamic Republic the right to ask for a guarantee, because it is not dealing with the country or countries that have fulfilled their agreement, but with the Americans who violated the agreement and they themselves admit that they violated the agreement. When they themselves admit that they violated the agreement, it is naturally necessary for them to provide guarantees so that we can somehow trust them with an agreement.”

With President Raisi attaching high importance to the guarantees, it seems that the ball is now in the U.S. court in terms of providing the necessary guarantees and facilitating the revival of the JCPOA.