US insists Iran’s latest proposal takes steps back from returning to nuclear deal

BRUSSELS, Sep. 9 (EUROPE PRESS) –

The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, insisted on Friday that Iran’s latest proposal in the framework of the negotiation to restore the nuclear agreement “takes steps back” in returning to the pact.

“We are not willing to accept an agreement that does not meet our basic requirements and continuously tries to introduce strange demands that are not relevant to the agreement itself,” Blinken said when asked at a press conference at NATO headquarters.

Without wanting to reveal more details, the head of US diplomacy has assured that positions had been approached in recent weeks with Tehran, but the most recent response to the final document proposed by the European Union, which acts as a mediator, involves taking “steps back” .

Blinken has pointed out that Washington will only reach an agreement if the conditions improve US national security. “The president (Joe Biden) is focused on that, and what we see again is that we only take steps backwards and not forwards,” he lamented.

The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, already warned this Monday that Iran’s latest demand does not help to complete the talks and in fact puts the process “in danger”.

As he explained, the conditions demanded by Iran are assuming a “divergence” in the positions of the negotiations. “The positions are further apart, this is worrying and the whole process is in danger,” she said. Tehran is now asking for more guarantees and the closure of the investigation of its nuclear activity to confirm its compliance with the 2015 agreement.

The diplomatic process sponsored by the EU seeks to restore an agreement that, although it is still in force, is badly damaged after the United States unilaterally withdrew during the Donald Trump period, and Iran breached the agreed limits on its nuclear activity. .

For the EU, the proposal put on the table by Borrell a month ago is a final document that the participants in the nuclear agreement must sign or reject, after a 16-month process of talks, mainly in Vienna, to get the United States to return to the Iranian nuclear deal.