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Iran Reviewing Draft of New Nuclear Deal, Its Foreign Minister Says

Iran is “seriously reviewing” a rough draft of an updated nuclear agreement with the world powers. Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian also tweeted on Saturday that “Our red lines are made clear to western parties. Ready to immediately conclude a good deal, should they show real will.”  Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri returned over the weekend to Tehran for consultations.

Iran and the world powers have been negotiating a new deal to reinstate the 2015 nuclear agreement that has fallen apart since the United States unilaterally left the deal in 2018. The draft agreement comes after nine rounds of negotiations in Vienna that began in April. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the official name of the nuclear agreement, rolled back sanctions on Iran in return for strict limits on its nuclear activities.

On Friday, Iran’s nuclear chief said that the Islamic Republic would continue to enrich uranium to 20% purity even after a revived nuclear deal. “(Uranium) enrichment … continues with a maximum ceiling of 60%, which led Westerners to rush to negotiations, and it will continue with the lifting of sanctions by both 20% and 5%,” the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization Mohammad Eslami said, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.

The 2015 deal restricted the purity to which Iran can enrich uranium to 3.67%; 90% enrichment is needed to achieve a nuclear weapon.