Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov urged not to dramatize the negotiation process in Vienna on the resumption of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran's nuclear program.
"I would not overdramatize anything [within the framework of the negotiation process in Vienna on the Iran nuclear deal]. It is clear that the current [negotiating] Iranian team is new, but they very quickly - I would say professionally - mastered the material, prepared proposals, which at first were met with hostility by some Western participants, but eventually recognized that these proposals have the right to exist, have the right to be studied. And this is exactly the way the work is going now," said the head of the diplomatic mission in an interview to the channel RT on the international agenda.
As the minister pointed out, there are "good chances" to achieve positive results. "Here, of course, it is important to keep in mind the principle on which the work is based, and everyone agrees with him - nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. There needs to be a correct, well-tuned package, it is quite realistic," he said.
According to Lavrov, some difficulties in the negotiations were created by rigid positions of the US and Iranian sides on the question of who should make the first step. "Iran was convinced that the Americans should do it, because the Americans were the first to withdraw from the JCPOA," the minister continued. - "The Americans believed that Iran had begun to violate its commitments, and regardless of the fact that Washington was not fulfilling its commitments at all, Iran should make the first move. We, together with our Chinese friends - and in general with a certain understanding from the European participants - were in favor of synchronizing this movement, so that there would be such a package of counter steps, and this is what the negotiators in Vienna are doing right now."
December 17 in Vienna, the seventh round of talks on the restoration of the Iranian nuclear deal ended. European negotiators took a break for the Christmas holidays. Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia's Permanent Representative, didn't rule out that the next, eighth round might be the last and the longest. Nevertheless, the negotiators are set to try to finish the work before the end of January - the beginning of February 2022.
Negotiators have previously confirmed that further work will proceed on the basis of documents that have been developed during the six rounds by June 2021. It was noted that all parties are committed to restoring the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on the Iranian nuclear program in its original form.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Russian Foreign Ministry
Based on materials from TASS