President: Iran won’t back down on ‘red lines’ in nuclear talks

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said yesterday that his country will not back down on its red lines in nuclear talks with Western powers, the semi-official Fars News Agency reported.

“The government pursues nuclear negotiations in full accordance with the principles and framework set by the Supreme Leader, it has not and will not back down on any of these red lines,” Raisi was quoted as saying.

This came after the European Union said it was time for the United States and Iran to take the necessary political decisions to reach an agreement. The 11-month long talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal have reached their final stages.

Iran seeks all sanctions be lifted and wants guarantees from the United States that it will not abandon the agreement as it did in 2018 when then-US President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement and reimposed sanctions on Tehran.

Earlier on Monday, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani returned to Tehran for consultations.

Meanwhile, the European Union’s nuclear talks coordinator, Enrique Mora,  said on Monday the time had come for political decisions to be taken to end the negotiations, Reuters reported.

Diplomats say there is still a need to overcome many differences in the talks, which have also been damaged by Russia’s last-minute demands for a guarantee from the United States that its trade, investment and military-technical cooperation with Iran will not be affected by sanctions linked to its invasion of Ukraine.

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However, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken played down the Russian demand during a visit to Estonia, saying Russia had a self-interest in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

“We continue to work to see if we can come back to mutual compliance with Iran on the deal. Russia continues to be engaged in those efforts and it has its own interest in ensuring that Iran is not able to acquire a nuclear weapon,” Blinken said.

If the talks collapse, it runs the risk of Tehran entering a short-lived race to acquire a nuclear weapon, sparking a new war in the Middle East while pushing the West to impose more sanctions on Iran and drive up already high global oil prices due to the conflict in Ukraine.

The parties involved in the talks said last week that an agreement was expected within days.