In his first phone call to a Western leader, the new president of Iran asked his French counterpart Monday to help secure Iran's "rights" in now-stalled talks to revive Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers.
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Ebrahim Raisi, the hard-line cleric and protégé of Iran's supreme leader who took office last week, told French President Emmanuel Macron that the US and European Union must implement their commitments under the landmark 2015 deal, the official IRNA news agency reported.
France, alongside the US, Germany, Britain, Russia, and China, was part of the original 2015 nuclear agreement and has played a prominent role as an intermediary.
"In any negotiation, the rights of the Iranian nation should be secured and guaranteed," he said, criticizing the US for abandoning the accord and reimposing crushing sanctions under former President Donald Trump.
Even as tensions rise in the region and Tehran gradually abandons its own commitments under the nuclear deal, Raisi's remarks signal the new administration's willingness to return to the table. The parties to the agreement have convened in Vienna over the last several months to resuscitate the accord, which reined in Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. The talks ended in June with no date set for their resumption.
Macron, for his part, called on Iran to "quickly resume negotiations in Vienna in order to get to a conclusion and put an end without delay to all the nuclear activities it is carrying out in breach of the agreement," the French government statement said.
In the days before Raisi's inauguration, the region saw a series of escalations, including an explosive-laden drone attack on an Israeli-linked ship off the coast of Oman that killed two crew members. The West has blamed Iran for the assault, though Tehran has denied involvement.
The Iran Foreign Ministry said on Monday that Raisi holds the view that Iran never withdrew from the Vienna talks, which were put on hold in light of the transfer of power in the Islamic republic following the June presidential election. The ministry's spokesman also said that the new administration was confident that the United States would ultimately lift its economic sanctions on Iran and Special Aide to the President Hossein Amir-Abdollahian even met with the EU's foreign policy chief Enrique Mora to discuss the way forward.
Indirect talks between Tehran and Washington to revive the nuclear pact, from which then-President Donald Trump withdrew in 2018, adjourned on June 20, two days after the hardline cleric was elected president of the Islamic republic.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last say on Iran's state matters, declared recently that Tehran would not accept Washington's "stubborn" demands in nuclear talks and again flatly rejected adding any other issues to the deal.
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