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We will not retreat from nuclear rights: Iranian President

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said that his country would not give up its right to develop its nuclear industry for peaceful purposes. He added that all parties involved in talks to revive the 2015 nuclear accord should respect this stance.

“For more than the one-hundredth time, our message from Tehran to Vienna is that we will not back off from the Iranian people’s nuclear rights… not even an iota,” Raisi said in a speech marking Iran’s Nuclear Technology Day.

Raisi reiterated Iran’s stand that its nuclear programme is solely for peaceful purposes.

Eleven months of indirect talks between Iran and the United States in Vienna have stalled as both sides say political decisions are required by Tehran and Washington to settle the remaining issues.

Tough issues remain unresolved

In February both sides resumed indirect talks on reviving the tattered agreement after a 10-day hiatus and officials from the other parties to the accord – the UK, China, France, Germany and Russia – have shuttled between the two sides as they seek to close gaps.

Western diplomats previously indicated they hoped to have a breakthrough, but tough issues remained unresolved and Iran has rejected any deadline imposed by Western powers.

The agreement began to unravel in 2018 when then-President Donald Trump withdrew the United States and reimposed sanctions on Iran, which then began breaching the accord’s limits on its uranium enrichment activity. Diplomats and analysts say the longer Iran remains outside the deal, the more nuclear expertise it will gain, shortening the time it might need to race to build a bomb if it chose to, thereby vitiating the accord’s original purpose.

The United States might be considering removing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from its foreign terrorist organisations’ blacklist in return for Iranian assurances about reining in the elite force.

An Iranian diplomat claims that Tehran had rejected a US proposal to overcome the sticking point by keeping the Revolutionary Guard’s overseas arm, the Quds Force, under US sanctions while delisting the IRGC as an entity.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard is a powerful faction in Iran that controls a business empire as well as elite armed and intelligence forces that Washington accuses of carrying out a global terrorist campaign.

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