Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi addresses the Tehran Friday prayers marking the 43rd anniversary of Iran’s Islamic Revolution in Tehran, Iran February 11, 2022. President Website/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
DUBAI, April 9 – Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said on Saturday Tehran will not give up its right to develop its nuclear industry for peaceful purposes and all parties involved in talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal should respect that.
Eleven months of indirect talks between Iran and the United States in Vienna have stalled as both sides say Tehran and Washington need political decisions to resolve remaining issues. Continue reading
“For the more than 100th time, our message from Tehran to Vienna is that we will not back down from the Iranian people’s nuclear rights… not even one iota,” state media quoted Raisi as saying in a speech on Iran’s Atomic Energy Day.
Raisi reiterated Iran’s position that its nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes.
The United States is considering removing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the foreign terrorist organization (FTO) blacklist in exchange for Iranian pledges to rein in the elite force, Iranian and Western sources had told Reuters.
A senior administration official said President Joe Biden has no intention of removing the group from the terrorism label, Washington Post intelligence affairs columnist David Ignatius reported Friday.
An Iranian diplomat told Reuters Tehran has rejected a US proposal to overcome the sticking point by keeping the IRGC’s foreign arm, the Quds Force, under FTO sanctions and delisting the IRGC as an entity.
The IRGC is a powerful faction in Iran that controls a business empire and elite armed and intelligence forces that Washington accuses of orchestrating a global terror campaign.
Reporting by Parisa Hafezi and the Dubai newsroom; Edited by Angus MacSwan, Jan Harvey and Daniel Wallis