Iran’s FM says US must ditch excessive demands to revive 2015 deal

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian says Washington has to abandon its excessive demands in order to revive the 2015 Iran deal it abandoned four years ago.

Amir-Abdollahian made the remarks during a meeting with his Qatari counterpart, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, on the sidelines of a meeting of foreign ministers of Afghanistan’s neighbors in China on Wednesday.

“The United States must give up on demanding too much so that weeks of intense efforts by different parties in Vienna lead to the required result concerning the return of all parties to their commitments,” he said.

Negotiations have been held in Vienna since last April to restore the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program that was nixed by former US president Donald Trump.

Iran says Washington’s indecisiveness is to blame for the protraction of the talks, as a number of key issues remain unresolved, ranging from the removal of all post-JCPOA sanctions to the provision of guarantees by the American side that it will not leave the deal again.

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Amir-Abdollahian and Al Thani also discussed regional issues and the latest developments in Tehran-Doha relations, highlighting the need to activate the bilateral ties.

In his remarks, the Iranian chief diplomat condemned a meeting attended by top diplomats from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Morocco, Egypt, Bahrain, the United States, and Israel to push ahead with US-brokered normalization agreements between Arab states and the Israeli regime.

Iran has roundly denounced the normalization deals in general, and the Sunday meeting in the Negev desert in particular, as a stab in the back of the Palestinian people.

Amir-Abdollahian also called the meeting a great betrayal of the Palestinian cause and branded the Israeli regime “the main problem of the Islamic world.”

“Unfortunately, some countries, in a treacherous act, seek to normalize their relations with this regime, despite its contradiction with the lofty ideals of the Muslims of the world regarding al-Quds and Palestine,” he said.

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Heading a political delegation, Amir-Abdollahian left Tehran on Tuesday to attend the third meeting of foreign ministers of Afghanistan's neighbors in Tunxi, East China’s Anhui Province, which is scheduled to be held on March 30 and 31. 

Since arriving in China, the foreign minister has separately met with his counterparts from Qatar, Pakistan, Russia, Turkmenistan, and Indonesia.

Pakistan hosted the first meeting of foreign ministers of Afghanistan’s neighbors, which was held in a virtual format, in September 2021. The second such event took place in the Iranian capital the following month.

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