Iran insists that it will only start complying with its obligations under the nuclear deal after the United States removes all the sanctions on the Islamic Republic, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said.
World powers, including the United States, started talking about the deal in Vienna this week.
“Iran will return to its JCOPA obligations once the US fully lifts its sanctions in action and not in words or on paper, and once Iran verifies the sanction relief,” Iran Press News Agency reported, citing the Ayatollah as saying.
On Thursday, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for political affairs, Abbas Araqchi, also said that Tehran would resume full compliance with the so-called nuclear deal only after the United States lifts all sanctions, including those on Iran’s oil exports.
“The US must lift anti-Iran sanctions [and only] then Tehran would resume compliance with [the] JCPOA,” Araqchi told Iran’s Press TV from Vienna on Thursday.
The United States, under the Biden Administration, is seeking to revive the nuclear deal, or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as it is officially known, after the Trump Administration pulled out of the agreement in 2018 and imposed sanctions on Iran’s oil, shipping, and banking industries.
The Biden Administration, however, has set Iran’s return to compliance with its nuclear activities as a condition before it would consider lifting the sanctions.
Despite the fact that the United States and Iran are now indirectly talking—via the European, Russia, and Chinese signatories to the nuclear deal—positions remain apart. Both the United States and Iran are demanding that the other make the first concession.
Analysts see the start of indirect talks as a positive sign toward lifting the sanctions on Iran’s oil exports at some point in the future. However, most analysts also see the return of Iranian barrels legitimately on the oil market as a move that would be taken into account by the OPEC+ group so that oil prices would not sink.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
