Iran wants all sanctions lifted for an agreement on its nuclear programme

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi has called on Western countries to lift all sanctions that have imposed on his country in order to reach an agreement on its nuclear programme, Anadolu news agency reported on Tuesday.

In an interview with local Iranian television, the news agency quoted Takht-Ravanchi as saying that his country rejects any gradual lifting of the sanctions and instead demands the lifting of all sanctions all at once, while stressing that Iran will continue to enrich uranium.

Takht-Ravanchi said that his country does not want to prolong the nuclear negotiations, insisting that an agreement could be reached on time if the countries of the P5+1 group, the US, UK, France, China and Russia plus Germany, acted in good faith in dealing with the issue.

Since the beginning of this year, Iran and the P5 +1 group has held six rounds of negotiations in Vienna, but without reaching any final agreement because of disputes over several points, notably uranium enrichment and the number of centrifuges, the machines used to refine uranium, as well as the Arak nuclear reactor, which operates with heavy water.

Earlier, Iran and the P5 +1 group had reached an interim agreement as a result of the negotiations, which began on 24 November 2013. The agreement stipulated reaching a final solution by 20 July of this year, but the emergence of points of dispute between the two parties extended the deadline to 24 November 2014.