Preserving National Interests Iran’s Red Line in Nuclear Talks

Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said Iran would only accept a “sustainable agreement” that would secure its red lines in the course of talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, which was unilaterally abandoned by the United States three years after its conclusion.
“We do not seek an agreement that is not sustainable and fails to benefit Iranians. Our red lines are definitely nothing but guaranteeing the interests of the Iranian nation,” Amir-Abdollahian said on Monday, IRNA reported.
He also said despite the West’s unfair sanctions, Iran is in a good condition regarding its oil and non-oil exports.
The talks to salvage the nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, started in the Austrian capital Vienna in April last year with the intention of examining Washington’s seriousness in rejoining the deal and removing sanctions.
The talks remain stalled since August, while Washington has continued to insist on its hard-nosed position of not removing all sanctions slapped on the Islamic Republic by the previous US administration.
On Monday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani reiterated the Islamic Republic’s commitment to the JCPOA revival talks but made it clear that Tehran is not willing to negotiate under pressure and threats.

Balanced Foreign Policy 

Elsewhere in his remarks, Amir-Abdollahian said Iran’s “balanced” foreign policy is based on shifting toward neighboring and Asian countries, emphasizing that Tehran is present wherever its national interests are preserved.
“We are present in the West and East proportionate to our interests,” the top Iranian diplomat said.
Pointing to the unrest in Iran, which was sparked by the death of a young Iranian woman in police custody over two months ago, Amir-Abdollahian raised serious doubts about claims by the United States and the West to care about her death.
He said a Western national was arrested in Iran who claimed that he had been tasked by his country’s intelligence services to spread chaos across Iran to force Tehran to accept the West’s conditions in the negotiations to revive the JCPOA.
“Peaceful demands must be met within the framework of Iran’s duties and the Constitution,” the foreign minister stressed.
He also said 67 Iranian police forces have been killed and hundreds of others injured since the outbreak of the riots because the police were not allowed to use lethal weapons.
According to Amir-Abdollahian, the US and some of its Western allies have divided terrorism and riots into good and bad. “If [riots] occur with firearms in Iran, they are good,” he said, sarcastically.

In similar comments on Sunday, Kanaani censured Western officials for cheering rioters in independent states while suppressing peaceful protesters in their own countries.
“Officials of [Western] regimes who have coups, conspiracies, interventions, and devastating wars with millions of deaths in their history are now pretending to be defenders of human rights in other countries,” he tweeted.
Protests broke out in several Iranian cities after the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman who died in hospital three days after she collapsed in a police station in Tehran. An investigation later attributed her death to her medical condition, dismissing allegations that she had been beaten by police forces.
The Islamic Republic has criticized several countries for provoking the riots through their spy agencies and propaganda apparatus.