Iran not to regress to state before nuclear talks

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has envisaged a successful ending to the ongoing nuclear talks between Tehran and six major world powers, saying the Islamic Republic will not regress to the state before the negotiations.

“I just want to restate that we will not go back to the situation in the past; the state of affairs in the world and in the region is such that we will not return to the past and this is something that the world also disapproves of,” the Iranian president said on Thursday.

The president also referred to his negotiations with heads of state on the sidelines of the 69th annual session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in the Kyrgyz capital city of Bishkek, and the 4th summit of the Caspian Sea littoral states in the Russian port city of Astrakhan, saying, “We found that no one, especially the European countries, wants the present situation (standoff on Iran’s nuclear energy program) to continue.”

“We have made every effort to reach a [final] nuclear deal. It is not an easy task to reach an agreement on a highly significant issue with not only one, but six world powers,” Rouhani further said, adding, “Our initial experience indicated that we can reach a successful agreement with them.”

Highlighting the measures taken to finalize the deal, President Rouhani said, “These steps, though, are less than what we expected.”

“There’s not much time left; however, a final deal could be reached in the remaining period of time,” the Iranian president said.

Iran and P5+1 – Russia, China, France, Britain, the US and Germany – are in talks to work out a final deal aimed at ending the longstanding dispute over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy program as a November 24 deadline approaches.

Sources close to the Iranian negotiating team say the main stumbling block in the way of resolving the Western disputes over Iran’s nuclear energy program remains to be the removal of all the sanctions imposed on Iran and not the number of centrifuges or the level of enrichment.

Tehran wants the sanctions entirely lifted while the US, under pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby, insists that at least the UN-imposed sanctions against Iran should remain in place.