At a time when the Iranian nuclear deal talks are about to reach an agreement, Iran and world powers have adjourned their talks, mostly over whether the United States will remove Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) from its Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list.
While negotiations in the Austrian capital of Vienna stalled a year after they began, Tehran and Washington have ramped up their rhetorical war, demanding political decisions from the other side to bridge the final gap.
Firm stance
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said Thursday that his country “does not pay attention to excessive demands nor will it retreat from its red lines.”
Iran has so far insisted on its position with no signs that it may budge any time soon, said Iran’s English daily newspaper Tehran Times, adding that “in fact, the odds are currently against any change in Iran’s position.”
Such a firm approach to Vienna talks has recently been praised by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who “expressed his satisfaction with the resistance of the negotiating team to the other sides’ aggression and avarice,” according to his official website.
“The other side withdrew from the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) and broke its commitments. Now they feel helpless and have reached a dead end,” Khamenei said, referring to the 2015 nuclear deal.
According to the reports provided by Amir-Abdollahian and Iran’s chief negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani, “the red lines of the system have not been crossed in any way in the Vienna talks,” Jalil Rahimi Jahan Abadi, a member of the Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying last week.
“The United States not only has not achieved anything since leaving the JCPOA, but even Iran’s position has become stronger and more coherent in recent years than when the United States was present in the JCPOA,” the Iranian lawmaker pointed out.