US to Regret It If No Good Deal Is Reached in Vienna, Iran’s Shamkhani Says
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani advised the US administration to learn lessons from its predecessor and not lose the opportunity to strike a good agreement in the Vienna talks on lifting the sanctions on Iran and reviving the 2015 nuclear deal.
“Strategy of active resistance defeated Trump's policy of maximum pressure confessing by current US administration,” Shamkhani said in a post on his Twitter account on Thursday.
“If Vienna Talks do not lead to a good deal, current US administration will feel defeated in near future due to lack of timely use of diplomatic opportunities,” he warned.
Iran and the remaining participants to the JCPOA have been holding talks in Vienna since April last year with the aim of reviving the deal by bringing the US into full compliance.
The US left the JCPOA in May 2018 under former president Donald Trump. The Vienna talks began on a promise by Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, to rejoin the deal and repeal the so-called maximum pressure campaign against Iran. Biden, however, has so far failed to undo Trump’s own undoing of Barack Obama’s Iran policy, which led to the JCPOA in June 2015.
The eighth round of the Vienna talks began on December 27 with a focus on the removal of all sanctions that the United States had imposed on Iran after its unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA. The US is not allowed to directly attend the talks due to its pullout in 2018 from the deal with Iran.
