The Iranian Foreign Ministry insisted on Monday that Iran's response to the US viewpoints on the European Union's proposed final draft of a potential nuclear agreement was "constructive, clear and legal", the Xinhua news agency reported.
If the other side has the reciprocal determination, Iran's answer can prepare the ground for the conclusion of the negotiations on the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal in a very short period, Nasser Kanaani, the ministry spokesman, told a weekly press conference.
The main objectives of the Iranian administration and negotiating team in the nuclear talks are the removal of the US sanctions and safeguarding Iran's economic interests, he stated.
The first priority for the Iranian negotiating team is to secure the other sides' guarantees of their continued commitment to the potential nuclear agreement, the spokesman added.
Iran last week announced it had submitted its comments to the US response to the European Union’s draft for reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
While Kanaani said at the time that Iran’s response was prepared based on a constructive approach, a senior Biden administration official told Politico, “We are studying Iran’s response, but the bottom line is that it is not at all encouraging.”
Last Friday, a senior European official directly involved in nuclear talks with Iran told Axios’ Barak Ravid that Iran’s latest response to the EU’s proposal is unreasonable and indicates that the Iranians are not interested in closing a deal.
"The Iranian response was totally unreasonable. It reopens the EU coordinator’s text on nuclear safeguards, which was at the outer limits of our flexibility already - and which the Iranians implicitly accepted in their August 15 response," the official said.
The European official stressed to Ravid, "The Iranian response can only be read as they do not want to close this deal - when we were so close, for the first time in 18 months."
The spokesman on Monday said Iran would keep pursuing its constructive approach in order to reach a "good and lasting" agreement, expressing hope that the other side would also adopt a constructive approach for the same purpose.
On Sunday, a senior Iranian lawmaker urged Western countries to refrain from delays in reaching a nuclear agreement, warning that otherwise, Iran would consider "other options".
Iran has scaled back its compliance with the 2015 deal ever since former US President Donald Trump withdrew from it in 2018 and has continued to do so even during the talks with the US.
Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that Iran has begun enriching uranium with the second of three cascades, or clusters, of advanced IR-6 centrifuges recently installed at its underground plant at Natanz.
The report, released on Wednesday, followed a report released by the IAEA two days earlier which indicated that the first cascade had been brought onstream.