Adviser to the Iranian delegation to the Vienna negotiations, Mohammad Marandi, said on Saturday that removing the Revolutionary Guards from the US terrorist list was “absolutely not a precondition” for the nuclear deal.
This came in response to a statement by a US official published on CNN’s website, in which he said that Tehran had retracted its demand to remove the Revolutionary Guards from the list of terrorism.
“I have said more than once during the past few months that removing the Revolutionary Guards from the US terrorist list was never a prerequisite or essential” for the nuclear deal, Marandi said in a tweet.
He added, “If the United States wants to market the agreement by making these allegations, it is up to them.”
He continued, “Iran will simply keep the name of the US Central Command in the Middle East on its terrorist list.”
And on Saturday morning, a senior official in the US administration told CNN that Iran did not demand in its response, which it sent last Monday, the removal of the Revolutionary Guards from the US State Department’s list of terrorist organizations.
The official (unnamed) told the channel that the Iranians also dropped demands related to removing a number of companies linked to the Revolutionary Guards from the same list.
He added that US President Joe Biden was “firm and consistent” in not removing the terrorist designation from the Revolutionary Guards.
The European Union, coordinator of negotiations to revive the agreement, from which the United States unilaterally withdrew four years ago, submitted last week a “final” settlement proposal, calling on Tehran and Washington, who are negotiating indirectly, to respond to it, hoping to culminate in talks that began a year and a half ago.
And last Tuesday, the official Iranian news agency IRNA reported that Tehran had submitted its “written response to the text proposed by the European Union,” saying that “an agreement will be reached if the American response is realistic and flexible.”
Hours following the announcement, the European Union and the United States confirmed that the Iranian response was subject to evaluation.
A spokeswoman for EU Foreign Minister Josep Borrell said: “We received Iran’s response last night. We are studying it and we are consulting with other parties to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and the United States on the way forward.”
Diplomats from Iran, the United States and 5 countries (China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany) have been negotiating for months in Vienna on a deal to restore Tehran’s commitment to restrictions on its nuclear program, in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
And in May 2018, former US President Donald Trump reinstated sanctions on Tehran, following announcing his withdrawal from the nuclear agreement signed under his predecessor Barack Obama.
TRT Arabic – Agencies
