Iran and the U.S. are haggling over problems with world powers’ nuclear deal with Tehran that predated the Trump administration’s 2018 withdrawal from the accord, a top Iranian government official said, suggesting that negotiations to bring Washington back into the fold have become more complicated than previously known.
Mahmoud Vaezi, President Hassan Rouhani’s chief of staff, said the U.S. has agreed in principle to lift all of the more than 1,000 economic sanctions that were reimposed and added by Donald Trump after he exited the deal, including those on Iran’s oil, petrochemicals, banking and steel sectors. But broader trade penalties on Iran’s financial sector that weren’t lifted under the pact scared off foreign investors and banks, blocking Tehran from receiving many of the economic benefits that it had expected to flow from its agreement to rein in its nuclear program.
“Right now, we’re discussing which of the remaining sanctions are related to the nuclear deal and which ones relate to before 2015,” Vaezi told reporters in Tehran, according to the Iranian Students’ News Agency. “Also, now it’s possible some of the sanctions related to individuals and matters prior to 2015 will remain, and they are also negotiating over those,” he said. (BBG, uscita stamattina presto)