The United States on Friday dismissed suggestions that Iran was exporting much more oil than it is allowed to sell under a preliminary nuclear deal with world powers and predicted that aggregate Iranian oil sales would meet targets set for Tehran, Reuters reported on Friday, April 4th.
The remarks from a senior U.S. official came ahead of a new round of senior-level negotiations between Iran and the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia in Vienna on April 8-9.
The senior U.S. official said the United States had always expected fluctuations and was focusing on aggregate, not short-term, data.
“We have had teams talk to each of the importers of Iranian oil , and we feel comfortable that , in fact , they will meet the target that we have and there is nothing to lead us to believe otherwise at this time,” the senior U.S. official told reporters in a conference call.
“We of course keep continuous eye on this,” the official added.
Diplomats and intelligence officials say that while Iran has been negotiating with the six powers, it has kept up its efforts to circumvent the sanctions.
The U.S. official said Iran will have to make some difficult choices about the future of its nuclear program if it is to reach an agreement with the six world powers that would bring an end to international sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
“In order to ensure that they will not obtain a nuclear weapon and that the international community has the assurances it needs that their program is entirely and exclusively peaceful, they will have to make some significant changes and some significant choices,” the official added.
The senior U.S. official declined to elaborate on what the biggest choices facing Iran involved, but diplomats close to the talks say that the fate of the Arak reactor that could yield bomb-grade plutonium and the scope of Iran’s uranium enrichment research and development program are among the sticking points.
Diplomats said that U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, the head of the U.S. delegation at the talks, was expected to hold more bilateral talks next week with Iran’s delegation, which is headed by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his deputy, Abbas Araqchi.
Such regular close contact between senior U.S. and Iranian officials would have been virtually unthinkable a year ago.
Iran has said repeatedly since pragmatist Hassan Rouhani was elected president last year that it wants to improve relations with Washington, which broke off ties in 1980