No ministers meeting on JCPOA in Vienna unless US observes Iran’s redlines: Source tells Press TV

Deputy Secretary General of the European External Action Service Enrique Mora and Iran’s chief negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani wait for the start of a meeting of the JCPOA Joint Commission in Vienna, Austria, on November 29, 2021. (File photo by AFP)

In exclusive remarks to Press TV, a source close to the Iranian negotiating team dismisses reports claiming that the foreign ministers of the countries remaining in the 2015 deal with Iran would travel to Vienna to announce a “final agreement.”

There has been talk of a potential travel by the countries’ foreign ministers to the Austrian capital over the past months, the source said on Tuesday.

“However, it is not yet clear when such a trip would take place,” it noted, adding, “No such trip is going to take place as long as the United States refuses to accept Iran’s redlines.”

The US left the deal, which is officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in 2018 and returned the sanctions that the accord had lifted. The deal’s remaining members—the UK, France, Russia, and China plus Germany—have been holding many rounds of negotiations in Vienna to examine the prospect of the accord’s revival.

The Islamic Republic insists that it will not enter any agreement that bypasses its redlines. Among other things, Tehran says, a “good agreement” features complete lifting of all the sanctions, guarantees that Washington would not sabotage the deal again, and exclusion of such issues as Tehran’s defense program and regional influence.

The source relayed the information to Press TV after the Saudi Arabia-owned al-Arabiya news channel alleged, citing “diplomatic sources,” that Vienna was ''likely'' to host a meeting among the foreign ministers of the parties to the deal aimed at announcement of “an agreement.”

Observers say the channel has come up with the false report to potentially alleviate the pressure that European countries have been mounting on the US to accept Iran’s conditions.


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