The United States will maintain sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic, even in the event of a nuclear agreement, the American envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, said on Sunday. of the Doha Forum in Qatar.
They "
will remain sanctioned under US law and our perception (of them) will always be the same
", the diplomat said, as Tehran demands that the United States remove the Revolutionary Guards from its list of organizations terrorists.
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On Saturday, Iran confirmed that this withdrawal was among the points still under discussion in the negotiations to revive the Iranian nuclear agreement.
In Doha, where political and economic leaders are meeting, Robert Malley warned that an agreement was neither "
inevitable
" nor "
very close
".
Iran 'close enough' to a deal
“
We're pretty close
,” he said of the negotiations, but “
we've been pretty close now for a while.
And I think that tells you everything you need to know about the difficulty of the questions
” addressed.
Also present in Doha, Kamal Kharazi, former Iranian foreign minister and now adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, argued that the Revolutionary Guards were "
the national army and the national army cannot be placed on the list of terrorist organisations
”.
Tehran has been engaged for several months in talks in Vienna with China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom and Germany to save the 2015 agreement supposed to prevent Tehran from acquiring the atomic bomb.
In exchange, the Islamic Republic, which has always denied wanting to acquire atomic weapons, is seeking to obtain the lifting of the sanctions which are suffocating its economy.
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The United States has participated indirectly in the Vienna talks since its withdrawal from the agreement in 2018, decided by then-President Donald Trump, with the reinstatement of sanctions against Iran key.
In response, the Iranians had gradually freed themselves from the limits imposed on its nuclear program.
The coordinator of the European Union (EU) in charge of supervising the talks on the Iranian nuclear, Enrique Mora, is Sunday in Tehran where he must meet his Iranian counterpart, Ali Baghéri.
The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, declared on Saturday on the sidelines of the Doha Forum that the conclusion of a nuclear agreement with Iran was a “
matter of days
”.
