President Ebrahim Raisi outlines the threefold foundations of a potential agreement between Iran and the P4+1 group of states.
Speaking on the phone with his French counterpart Emanuel Macron on Saturday, Raisi identified the "basic foundations" as "sanction removal, verifiability, and credible guarantees."
"Whatever effort on the part of the other side should incorporate" the threesome categories, the Iranian president said, noting that "the Islamic Republic has already proven its resolve for and seriousness about the realization of [such an] agreement."
The P4+1 features the UK, France, Russia and Germany, which are the remaining signatories of a 2015 deal with the Islamic Republic. The United States quit the deal in 2018 and returned the sanctions that the accordhad lifted.
Since last year, Iran and the P4+1 have been holding eight rounds of talks in Vienna, Austria, to examine the potential of removal of the sanctions.
he United States has also been sending a delegation to the negotiations. Iran has, however, categorically rejected holding any direct or indirect talks with the American team.
To fortifyany potential agreement against the flaws at the heart of theprevious deal, the Islamic Republic has insistedthat any new pact should ensure verifiability of the sanctions removal process, and also include guarantees that Washington would not be able to leave the deal again.
Raisi, meanwhile, noted that the US itself has admitted that the former American administration's policy of "maximum pressure," under which Washington left the 2015 deal and re-imposed the sanctions, had ended in failure.
The French president, for his part, acknowledged that the Islamic Republic was "rightful" not to trust the US, because it was Washington that led the deal into its current "crisis" in the first place.