Iran to resume JCPOA talks once US ready: FM
Iran says it is ready to go back to the negotiations table with the United States as soon as the latter is ready.
Iran is ready to continue working on reviving the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as soon as the United States indicates that it is ready to continue as well, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said on Monday.
"We are not waiting for winter and can move towards an agreement as soon as the United States expresses its readiness. We do not need time," Kanaani said, as quoted by the Iranian news agency ISNA.
"We have proved that we are committed to negotiations… We do not negotiate for the sake of negotiations. We are holding them in order to return to the agreement," Kanaani added.
Kanaani accused earlier in the day the United States of having a hypocritical position regarding the talks aimed at reviving the JCPOA.
Over the past year and a half, efforts have been mobilized to revive the JCPOA deal after then-President Donald Trump, with encouragement from then-Israeli occupation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had America withdraw from it in 2018 - stating that the agreement was "a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made," claiming that "it didn't bring calm, it didn't bring peace, and it never will."
The original JCPOA was signed in 2015 by China, France, Germany, Iran, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as the European Union.
The continuous refusal of the US to abide by Iran's red lines has led to several interruptions in the negotiations.
A draft proposal has been recently developed by the European Union to revive the agreement, and the bloc accepted Iran's response and deemed it to be "reasonable." However, the United States took several weeks to respond to Iran's remarks, and its excessive demands and lack of political will have so far prevented a deal to be reached in the talks.
In a press conference on Friday, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken underlined that the United States was still interested in reviving the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and that diplomacy is the best way to approach this issue however so far an agreement again is unlikely.
In September, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell stated that the JCPOA negotiation talks intended to lift sanctions on Iran and bring the US back into the nuclear deal are in a "stalemate".