Iran’s foreign minister says negotiations will be pursued to remove sanctions

In a tweet on Wednesday, Amir Abdollahian wrote that both tracks of negotiating to remove the sanctions and working to neutralize them via “economic advancement” and the “fair distribution… of subsidies” would be followed.

He said negotiations will take place while “observing Iran’s red lines in reaching a good, strong, and maintainable deal.”

Iran has been under stringent sanctions by the United States, which have battered its economy. Some of the harshest of those sanctions were imposed after former US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.

His successor, President Joe Biden, has expressed a desire to return to compliance, and Iran and the US have since been negotiating indirectly to facilitate the US’s return to the deal and to revive it.

Those talks have recently stopped in an apparent deadlock. European Union (EU) deputy foreign policy chief Enrique Mora is scheduled to visit Iran in an attempt to bring about a breakthrough.

Earlier, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said his administration does not view the removal of the sanctions on Iran as the sole solution to the country’s economic woes.

Meanwhile, a majority of Iranians say they want the Raisi administration to revive the nuclear deal, according to a recent national poll.