Behrouz Mohebbi made the comment in a tweet on the sidelines of a closed-door meeting with Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian while highlighting the effectiveness of the Strategic Action Plan to Lift Sanctions and Protect Iranian Nation’s Interests passed by the Iranian parliament.
“By the Iranian foreign minister’s own admission, the Strategic Action Plan to Lift Sanctions has drawn the attention of influential world countries,” he said.
“All of them have received a clear and serious message,” he explained.
“The government will begin the talks this week with this powerful tool,” he added.
Iran and world powers, including the US, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany, struck the JCPOA on July 14, 2015. Under the accord, Iran agreed to scale back some of its nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief.
However, the US, under former President Donald Trump, unilaterally withdrew from the deal three years later and reinstated crippling sanctions on the Islamic Republic, although the country had been fully compliant with the agreement.
Iran and the remaining signatories to the JCPOA have already held six rounds of talks in Vienna, which began after the US administration of President Joe Biden voiced willingness to rejoin the nuclear agreement, three years after Trump’s withdrawal.
Negotiators took a break from the talks after Ebrahim Raeisi emerged victorious in Iran’s June presidential election, waiting for Iran’s democratic transition to take place in order for them to be able to continue the talks, as differences on key issues remained unresolved.
Since the beginning of the Vienna talks, Tehran has argued that the US—as the first party that violated the JCPOA—needs to take the first step by returning to full compliance with the agreement. Tehran also says it will resume all of its nuclear commitments under the deal only after the US lifts all the sanctions.
