Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said today, Wednesday, that the window for nuclear negotiations is still "open" but will not remain so forever, criticizing what he called the "hypocrisy" of Western powers on the sidelines of his visit to the Sultanate of Oman, which is an important regional mediator.
The visit to the Sultanate comes at a time when the nuclear negotiations have reached a dead end, and tensions have increased between the Islamic Republic, Europe and the United States.
The Sultan of Oman, Haitham bin Tariq, received the Iranian minister, Abdullahian, in Muscat, and received from him a message from the President of the Islamic Republic, Ibrahim Raisi, "regarding aspects of the existing cooperation between the two friendly countries in various fields within the framework of the good bilateral relations that unite them," according to the Omani News Agency.
The Iranian foreign minister indicated that the nuclear issue was at the top of the discussion list.
Outstanding issues
Earlier today, Wednesday, the spokesman for the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee in the Iranian parliament, Abu al-Fadl Amooei, said that what remains to reach an agreement in the nuclear negotiations is one issue and several sentences in the text of the agreement.
Amoui added - in an interview published today by the Iranian Mehr News Agency - that the issue of cooperation between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency is still outstanding, explaining that the opposite party was obligated in one of the proposals to help normalize Iran's nuclear file at the agency.
He added that Tehran, on the other hand, has begun a new course of cooperation with the Agency's General Secretariat and its Director, Rafael Grossi, in parallel with the negotiations with it, stressing that cooperation has taken place on 3 outstanding issues with the Agency.
The Iranian parliamentary official stressed that it was the American side that distanced itself from advancing the negotiations faster because of the midterm elections for the US Congress, which took place last November, and then because of its wrong political analyzes, as he put it.
He believed that the West was hoping that what he called the riots in Iran would contribute to achieving political advantages or weakening Tehran's negotiating position.
A spokesman for the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee in the Iranian parliament stated that his country does not intend to back down from its interests in the nuclear negotiations, and that reaching an agreement would not be far-fetched if the American side showed realism.
In this context, he indicated that Iran had announced since the beginning of the negotiations that if the other party was ready to return to its previous commitments under the 2015 agreement and lift the sanctions, then it, in turn, is ready to take action.
And last Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said that he had agreed with European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell - during his meeting with him in Jordan - to take final steps regarding the nuclear agreement, adding that the door is open by Iran to conclude an agreement within the framework of nuclear negotiations.
For months, negotiations between Iran, the United States, and 5 other countries (France, Britain, China, Russia, and Germany) have stalled in the Austrian capital, Vienna, regarding a deal to restore restrictions on Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for lifting economic sanctions that were re-imposed by former US President Donald Trump after his country withdrew from the agreement in May. May 2018.