TEHRAN, April 16 (Xinhua) -- Iranian nuclear delegates will not engage in "attritional" negotiations only "for the sake of negotiations," Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Thursday.
"As we did not accept talks leading to a photo op in the past four years, today we will seriously refuse to engage in negotiations for the sake of negotiations as well," he wrote on social media late at night, as quoted by Iran's Press TV.
Zarif thanked the support for the negotiation team by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, amid voices in Tehran calling for an end to the Vienna talks over the 2015 nuclear agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Khamenei's advice to refrain from attritional negotiations "has always been a beacon for us," Zarif wrote.
Calls to end the current negotiation process were heard loud on Iranian official media after a blackout struck the Natanz enrichment facility in central Iran on Sunday morning, and Iranian officials accused Israel of "nuclear terrorism."
The Rouhani administration, Zarif added, sees negotiations as a powerful and legitimate tool to solve problems, rather than a tribune for making speeches or a stage for taking photos.
A fresh round of talks to revive the JCPOA was held in Vienna on Thursday, with the lifting of the U.S. sanctions on Iran and scaling back Iran's nuclear activities on the agenda.
After talks with other signatories of the 2015 nuclear deal, namely Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany, Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told Press TV in Vienna that "although we still have differences, we share this common interest that we have to move forward, and we have to expedite this process in order to come to a conclusion as soon as possible."
