Iran drew a red line on Tuesday on how far it would go at landmark nuclear talks, saying as the meeting opened that it would not scrap any of its nuclear facilities.
The statement by Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi suggested tough talks ahead, constituting a rejection of a central demand by the six countries.
Lack of agreement would leave Iran struggling under the weight of harsh economic sanctions and a threat of military strikes.
The P5+1 seek an agreement that will leave Iran with little capacity to quickly ramp up its nuclear program into weapons-making mode with enriched uranium or plutonium, which can be used for the fissile core of a missile.
For that, they say Iran needs to dismantle or store most of its 20,000 uranium enriching centrifuges, including some of those not yet working. The six powers also demand that an Iranian reactor being built be either scrapped or converted from a heavy-water setup to a light-water facility that makes less plutonium.
Iran is desperate to shed nearly a decade of increasingly strict sanctions on its oil industry and its financial sector in exchange for meeting the six-power demands. But it is fiercely opposed to any major scaling back of its nuclear infrastructure.
“Dismantling (the) nuclear program is not on the agenda,” Araghchi told reporters in Vienna.