Tasnim – Iranian President’s Chief of Staff Mahmoud Vaezi gave an account of a French proposal for saving the 2015 nuclear deal and how France has been liaising with the Group of Seven (G7) about it, saying an Iranian economic delegation will go to Paris to discuss the details.

Speaking at a televised program on Saturday night, Vaezi said France had put forward the proposal two weeks ago, but Iran changed a considerable part of that offer in its response.

Vaezi said the proposal was made in the form of a plan resulting from five hours of telephone conversations between Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron.

The president’s chief of staff explained that the main sections of the proposal approved by the G7 were unacceptable to Iran, and Tehran let Macron know about its stances.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif’s recent trip to Paris helped achieve some progress, while the G7 members held meetings to discuss the plan, he added.

Vaezi also noted that an Iranian delegation, consisting of an economic team and led by Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, will leave Tehran for Paris on Monday to discuss the plans.

On August 25, Zarif made an unexpected arrival in Biarritz, France, where the G7 summit was taking place, and met with French President Emmanuel Macron and with his French counterpart Jean Jean-Yves Le Drian.

Paris has stepped up efforts in recent weeks to persuade Tehran not to take the third step in reducing its commitments to the 2015 nuclear deal, although the three EU parties to the nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), have failed to honor their own commitments after the US scrapped the accord in May 2018.

France was the first country to contact the Islamic Republic following Tehran’s May 8 decision to reduce some of the JCPOA commitments.

There are speculations that Macron has proposed a “freeze for freeze” plan, based on which Iran would stop its nuclear decision and the US would lift its nuclear-related sanctions against Iran.