A child puckers her lips on a window of a bus heading to a temporary housing location, following Russian invasion of Ukraine, near the North Railway Station in Bucharest, Romania, March 9, 2022. Inquam Photos/Octav Ganea via REUTERS
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DUBAI, March 10 (Reuters) – Iran on Thursday called on the United States to drop “unacceptable proposals” in talks on reviving Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers, while Russia’s demands for guarantees from Washington complicated efforts to close an agreement.
The 2015 deal that lifted sanctions on Iran in return for curbs on its nuclear programme was on the verge of being restored after 11 months of negotiations until Russia presented a new obstacle last week by demanding written guarantees from the United States that Western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine would not affect its trade with Iran.
Top security official Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, which makes the decisions in the talks in Vienna and reports to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said on Twitter that in the absence of a political decision by the United States the talks “become more complicated every hour”.
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The United States was making “unreasonable offers” and exerting “unjustified pressure” to quickly reach an agreement which shows that Washington is not interested in a strong accord, said Shamkhani in a tweet.
The absence of a U.S. political decision is making the talks more complicated by the hour, he added.
The United States “has no will to reach a strong agreement”, he said adding that it was making “unacceptable proposals (and) insists on a quick agreement with false pretences.”
He did not elaborate on the U.S. proposals.
Iran will not back down from any of its red lines in talks in Vienna, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said on Thursday.
“The government has vigorously pursued the removal of sanctions in Vienna talks,” he added in a tweet. Iran has also said it wants guarantees that no future U.S. president will abandon a nuclear deal once again.
Negotiators in Vienna are still trying to tackle a few key issues, said the semi-official Tasnim news agency citing an unnamed source.
A revived nuclear deal cannot limit Tehran’s pursuit of its missile and space programmes, said Nour news, which is affiliated with a top security body.
Iran is not willing to negotiate its defence capabilities and regional policies, Nour news added in a tweet.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has successfully put a second military satellite, the Noor 2, into orbit, state media said on Tuesday.
The U.S. military says the same long-range ballistic technology used to put satellites into orbit could also allow Tehran to launch longer-range weapons, possibly including nuclear warheads.
Tehran denies U.S. assertions that such activity is a cover for ballistic missile development and says it has never pursued the development of nuclear weapons.
Iran has one of the biggest missile programmes in the Middle East.
European negotiators from France, Britain, and Germany have temporarily left the talks as they believed they had gone as far as they could and it was now up to the United States and Iran to agree on outstanding issues.
Iran’s chief negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, returned to Tehran unexpectedly after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov outlined Moscow’s new demands.
Iran’s foreign minister said at the time that Tehran would not let its interests be harmed by “foreign elements”.
Bagheri Kani flew back to Vienna on Wednesday.
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Reporting by Dubai Newsroom; Editing by Robert Birsel, Michael Georgy and Toby Chopra
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.