Bullying won't help US succeed in talks with Iran, security chief says

TEHRAN, February 8. /TASS/. The current US administration follows the same strategy of bullying in relations with Iran that fell through during the Trump administration, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani said on Tuesday.

“Continuing maximum pressure against Iran, current US administration has so far tried to meet the goals that Trump failed to achieve through bullying, by making unsupported promises, ” the IRNA news agency quoted him as saying. He added that with these Washington's illusions, “the path to negotiations will not be smooth.”

On Tuesday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani who heads Iran’s delegation traveled to Vienna to resume the eighth round of talks on reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran’s nuclear program.

Earlier, Russian Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov who leads the Russian delegation at the talks stated that these negotiations had entered the homestretch which “demands additional efforts and political will of all participants in the interests of a complete revival of the nuclear deal including the lifting of US unilateral sanctions against Iran.”

On January 3 in Vienna, after a holiday break, the eighth round of talks resumed on reviving the JCPOA in its original form and on returning the US to the deal. Work is conducted in the format of the Joint Commission of Iran and the group of five (Russia, the UK, Germany, China and France) and their separate consultations with the US without Iran participating since so far it has not been ready for direct talks with the American side. The negotiators have already agreed to speed up the process of developing an agreement draft. It is presumed that the eighth round would become the final one, the negotiators intend to conclude the talks in February 2022.