On Friday, the official Iranian news agency reported that one of the countries had released $3.5 billion of Iranian funds withheld as a result of Washington's sanctions on Tehran, while Ali Bagheri Kani, Iran's chief negotiator in the Vienna negotiations, said that the seventh round of nuclear negotiations would begin with negotiating the abolition of US sanctions. And it will not include other security and military issues.

Ali Nazeri, director of the official Iranian news agency, said - in a tweet on Twitter - that a large part of the released Iranian money was pumped into the Iranian commercial sector.

Nazeri did not reveal the name of the country that released some of the Iranian funds frozen due to US sanctions.

And Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said - in early last October - that Washington should first release $10 billion;

It is the Iranian funds frozen under US sanctions, in order to show goodwill before resuming the Vienna negotiations aimed at reviving the 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement, from which America unilaterally withdrew in 2018.

Tehran cannot obtain its funds, estimated at tens of billions of dollars deposited in international banks, the main source of which is Iran's exports of oil and natural gas, due to the severe US sanctions on the Iranian banking and energy sectors.

Starting point

In a related context, Ali Bagheri Kani, the Iranian assistant foreign minister for political affairs and Tehran's chief negotiator in the Vienna negotiations, said that the abolition of US sanctions would be the starting point for the seventh round of nuclear negotiations, which will start on November 29, after it stopped in June. Last June due to the presidential elections in Iran.


The Iranian official added that Tehran does not rule out forming an independent working group to verify the lifting of US sanctions, and Kani stressed that non-nuclear issues will not be presented at the Vienna negotiating table, nor will they negotiate over security and military files, in reference to the Iranian missile program, and what Washington calls it. Iran's destabilizing behavior in the Middle East.

The Iranian chief negotiator said that his country would demand guarantees to prevent Washington from withdrawing again from the nuclear agreement.

Mali tour

On the other hand, the US special envoy to Iran, Robert Malley, will start a visit to the Middle East and the Gulf today, Friday, at the head of an American delegation, to discuss the seventh round of the Vienna nuclear talks, and to coordinate positions between Washington and the countries that will be included in the visit, namely the UAE, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, regarding concerns, including activities Iran is "destabilizing", as he described it.

Yesterday, the US State Department stated that the visit of the Mali envoy will take place between November 11-20.

Today, the US special envoy to Iran, Robert Malley, begins a visit to the Middle East and the Gulf, at the head of an American delegation, to discuss the seventh round of the Vienna nuclear talks.

In contrast to the Iranian conditions for resuming the Vienna negotiations, the administration of US President Joe Biden insists on the simultaneous return of the US and Iranian sides to the 2015 agreement, which means Tehran’s return to commitment to the terms of the agreement and the reversal of its previous steps that violated the agreement, and at the same time Washington’s cancellation of the sanctions it imposed on Iran after Withdrawing from the agreement in 2018.

Western powers say that the chances of saving the agreement are diminishing in light of Iran's acceleration of uranium enrichment close to the level required for making weapons, considering this a violation of the restrictions stipulated in the agreement.

The main outstanding issues now revolve around the nuclear limits that Tehran will accept, and the nature of the sanctions that Washington will lift.

It should be noted that the nuclear agreement concluded between Iran on the one hand and China, Russia, the United States, France, Germany and Britain on the other hand;

It provides for the imposition of severe restrictions on the Iranian nuclear program to ensure its non-military nature, in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions imposed on Tehran.