Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Tuesday that his country’s future should not be tied to the success or collapse of nuclear talks with world powers, Reuters reported.
At the same time, he also said that the negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear deal “are progressing well.”
“Absolutely do not wait for nuclear negotiations in planning for the country and move forward,” Khamenei told a gathering of senior officials.
“Do not let your work be disrupted whether the negotiations reach positive or semi-positive or negative results,” he added.
“The United States broke its promises (by exiting the deal) and now they have reached a dead end while Iran is not in such a situation,” Khamenei said, while calling on Iran’s nuclear negotiators to continue “resisting America’s excessive demands.”
Iran has gradually scaled back its compliance with the 2015 deal, in response to former US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement in May of 2018, but has held several rounds of indirect talks with the US on a return to the agreement.
Negotiations nearly reached completion last month before Moscow demanded that its trade with Iran be exempted from Western sanctions over Ukraine, throwing the process into disarray.
Among the key sticking points is Tehran's demand to delist the Revolutionary Guards from a US terror list.
Last month it was reported that the Biden administration is considering removing terrorism sanctions from the IRGC as part of negotiations to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
However, The Washington Post reported last week that the Biden administration plans to reject the Iranian demand.
On Sunday, Iran's Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said that Washington is "imposing new conditions" in the nuclear negotiations.
"In the last two or three weeks, the American side has made excessive demands that contradict some paragraphs of the text," he said.