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(Reuters) – Iran’s main talks on Monday will focus on lifting all US sanctions in a verifiable process that will ensure Tehran’s ability to export its oil without hindrance, Iran’s foreign minister has said.
Negotiations with Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal to save the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) will resume negotiations in Vienna at 18:00 (1700 GMT) in Vienna, state media reported.
“The most important issue for us is, first and foremost, to get to a point where Iran’s oil can be sold easily and without hindrance,” said Hossein Amirabdollahian, Iran’s foreign minister.
“Oil (sales) money should be introduced into Iranian banks as foreign currency in order to enjoy all the economic benefits set out in the Comprehensive Comprehensive Action Plan.”
In 2018, US President Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA and re-imposed severe economic sanctions on Tehran, and a year later responded by uranium enrichment, accelerating the resumption of uranium enrichment, a potential means of nuclear weapons.
Oil exports, Iran’s main source of income, have fallen as a result of US sanctions. Tehran does not disclose the data, but estimates based on shipments and other sources suggest that in 2018 it fell from around 2.8 million barrels per day (bpd) to 200,000 bpd. A survey put exports at 600,000 bpd in June.
Nuclear talks have made little progress since they resumed last month after a five-month hiatus after Ebrahim Raisi was elected tough president of Iran.
“Today, there is an acceptable joint document on the negotiating table that we call the December 1 and December 15 documents,” Amirabdollahian said. Both documents, he said, deal with nuclear issues as well as U.S. sanctions.
“From now on, our negotiations will begin on the basis of this joint document. Guarantees and checks are among the issues on the agenda, ”said Amirabdollahian.
The two Iranian draft texts, submitted in Vienna on November 26, were modified versions of those made in June under the previous Iranian administration.
Under the 2015 agreement, Iran restricted its uranium enrichment program in exchange for easing US, EU and UN economic sanctions. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.
In recent talks, leading British, French and German diplomats gave a pessimistic assessment of efforts to revive the agreement. U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said last week that the U.S. and its partners were discussing nuclear diplomacy deadlines with Iran, adding that the current talks could be exhausted within a week.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Monday that the Iranian side would not accept a deadline. A source close to the Iranian group told Reuters that the delegation will remain in Vienna for the required time.
Israel, Iran’s main enemy, which is not involved in the talks, said the main challenge was to “avoid nuclear Iran.”
“Israel is not opposed to any agreement,” Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid told Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in Jerusalem on Monday.
“A good deal would be good. We are against an agreement that does not allow for real oversight of Iran’s nuclear program, not on Iranian money, not on Iran’s terrorist network.”
(mailto: dubai.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com Additional report by Dan Williams in Jerusalem; Nick Macfie’s edition)
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