Rouhani insists on Iran’s national interests in nuclear talks

President Hassan Rouhani says the nuclear talks with P5+1 prove Iran favors reasoning and interaction regardless of the outcome of the negotiations.

“In the foreign policy,…we have acted so skillfully that if the negotiations failed, the world would accept that Iran has been in favor of reason and dialog, has never left the negotiating table, and has given response to ambiguities in the best way,” Rouhani said on Saturday.

If Iran succeeds, the world should know that the Iranian nation can settle its problems through logic, he added.

The president expressed hope that the Iranian negotiating team would safeguard national interests and demands.

Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the United States, France, Britain, Russia, China, and Germany have been holding intense talks over the past 15 straight days in Vienna to iron out the remaining differences and nail down a landmark historical deal on Tehran’s nuclear program.

Zarif-Kerry meeting

As a new deadline for a deal is looming on Monday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and US Secretary of State John Kerry held another round of sensitive talks late Saturday.

The top Iranian and US diplomats met on Saturday morning which was followed by another meeting in the presence of the European Union foreign policy chief Frederica Mogherini.

After a 90-minute meeting with his Iranian counterpart, the US secretary of state said in his Twitter account that there are still “difficult issues” to be resolved.