Qatar Foreign Minister visited Tehran this Wednesday a week after talks for reviving Iran nuclear deal were held for two days in Doha and yet ended fruitlessly.
This Wednesday afternoon, Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani arrived at Iran’s capital of Tehran to meet with his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amirabdollahian. The trip took place a week after EU’s envoy Enrique Mora met with Iran’s negotiating team in Doha for two days to hopefully revive the nuclear agreement known as the JCPOA. The talks, however, ended with no tangible results.
In a joint news conference with Sheikh Mohammed in Tehran, the Iranian Foreign Minister said that Iran is “determined to seek a good, strong and lasting accord, and despite American claims,” adding also that “we have not raised any demands outside of the nuclear deal.” Amirabdollahian’s words were a response to the US claims that the Doha talks failed because Iran demanded more than what it should have in the context of the JCPOA.
“They have, including in Doha, added demands that I think anyone looking at this would be viewed as having nothing to do with the nuclear deal, things that they’ve wanted in the past,” US Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley said this Tuesday. Rejecting Malley’s claims, Iran’s Amirabdollahian noted the same day that the United States “must decide if it wants a deal or insists on sticking to its unilateral demands.”
Also during Wednesday’s press conference, Amirabdollahian again referred to the Doha talks and said that Iran only demanded an “effective guarantee” by Washington on “anything that could [negatively] impact Iran’s economic benefits” under the original nuclear deal that was penned back in 2015.
Al Thani, who is also scheduled to meet Iran’s security chief Ali Shamkhani, said that for its part, Qatar supports the revival of the nuclear deal with Iran, and also any talks between Iran and countries of the region. Since negotiations reached a stalemate back in March this year, Qatar and Oman have been relaying messages between Tehran and Washington.
Will negotiations resume any time soon?
The talks to revive Iran’s nuclear deal stopped in March mostly because of Iran’s demand that the US must remove its Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) from the US terrorism list. Yet Washington refused to do so, claiming that the demand was beyond what was agreed under the agreements to revive the JCPOA. But when Iran accepted to get along and skipped the IRGC issue, this time it was the United States that showed reluctance to let the negotiations move forward to a mutually acceptable deal.
What Tehran wants now, according to the words of Foreign Minister Amirabdollahian, is a guarantee or a reliable assurance that the US will never withdraw from the nuclear deal again as it did in 2018 during the Trump administration. “The American side should guarantee that Iran will fully benefit from a 2015 revived deal. So far, the American side has not been able to give such assurances,” Amirabdollahian said this Wednesday. In addition, Tehran wants the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to once and for all drop its claims about military dimensions in Tehran’s nuclear program.
However, and with the talks ending quite fruitless last week in Doha, the US State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters this Tuesday that the United States has no plan for further talks at the moment. He also echoed Malley’s words one more time and added that the Islamic Republic has “consistently introduced extraneous demands that go beyond the four walls of the JCPOA.”
