Nuke talks must lead to lifting of sanctions: Iranian official

Tehran, Oct 12 (IANS) Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, Speaker of Iran's Parliament, said that any dialogue regarding the 2015 nuclear agreement must lead to the lifting of the sanctions against Tehran.

"The US withdrew from the agreement during the Trump era, and it was surprising that the world did not react well to the US move," Qalibaf said in a meeting with visiting President of Swiss National Council Andreas Aebi.

After Washington withdrew from the nuclear deal, formally known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in May 2018, "some countries claimed that this was an individual decision taken by former US President Donald Trump, but the Iranian authorities and people never accepted such claim", Xinhua news agency quoted the Speaker as saying.

Under the current US administration, the same policy of "maximum pressure" against Iran has in fact continued, "only with a different rhetoric", Qalibaf said.

Iran's Strategic Action Plan to Counter Sanctions and Protect the Rights of the People, passed as law by Parliament in December 2020, requires Tehran to gets assurances that the US "maximum pressure" against Iran will be abandoned before resuming full compliance with the JCPOA.

The first step for the reactivation of the JCPOA must be taken by the US, and a "compliance-for-compliance" principle must be followed, the Speaker said.

He stressed that Iran must see the economic benefits of the agreement effectively, not only in the form of statements on paper.

The US government under former President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal, commonly known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in May 2018 and unilaterally reimposed sanctions on Iran.

In response, Iran gradually stopped implementing parts of its commitments to the agreement from May 2019.

Tehran has repeated that it will "re-embrace" its reduced commitments, in case Washington does the same.

The JCPOA Joint Commission began to meet offline on April 6 in Vienna to continue previous discussions about a possible return of the US to the deal.

After six rounds of talks which ended on June 20, serious differences remain between Iran and the US on restoring the deal.