“Partly due to the bad cop role that France plays in the negotiations, they created certain obstacles in the last days of the previous round of Vienna talks. Since years ago and the previous rounds of negotiations on the nuclear deal, there has been shared role-playing by the US and Europe, specially the three European countries. The Americans mostly deal with the issue of sanctions, and Europeans, specially France, pursue the nuclear issue,” Khoshcheshm told the Persian-language Farhikhtegan newspaper on Tuesday.

He suggested Iran's success in the talks requires the country's enhanced use of leverages, saying, “The hands of our negotiators should be filled with leverages during the talks. These pressure leverages are available and could be adopted in areas of Iran's nuclear, missile, the regional powers and other fields, and these pressure leverages should be used to the maximum based on a well-planned and specific roadmap.”

Asked about the new draft that Iran and the world powers are due to discuss during the new rounds of talks, Khoshcheshm said, “The new draft is different from the drafts of Iran in the sixth round of the Vienna talks, with two types of major differences; first is a series of points in the draft of Vienna 6, which had come in violation of the nuclear deal, and Iran called for their correction or removal, and in its proposed draft, it removed and changed these items. Second type of changes included Iran's demands, mostly on the issue of sanctions, which had remained undecided and left in empty brackets for later discussions. No understanding and agreement was made about them in the draft of Vienna 6. The Iranian side added those items to its draft at the beginning of the seventh round and made its demands clear in this regard so that there would be no ambiguity about its demands for the lifting of sanctions in any future agreement.”

“So what Iran put on the table at the beginning of the seventh round was major corrections of the Vienna 6 draft, which, after lengthy talks and contrast with Vienna 6, a major part of the demands and omissions that Iran had made were accepted and endorsed, and in the next three or four days, the other issues demanded by Iran are due to be addressed so that the agenda of negotiations on the context will fully be prepared for the beginning of January and the next round of negotiations. In fact, what Iran is pushing for is the removal of sanctions that put people under economic pressure. These sanctions should be fully lifted so that the country will be able to benefit economically,” he concluded.

Iran and the five remaining parties to the JCPOA -- Britain, Germany, France, Russia and China -- resumed talks in Vienna on November 29 after a five-month hiatus, marking the first round of negotiations under President Seyed Ebrahim Rayeesi’s administration and the seventh overall.

During the seventh round of the Vienna talks, Iran presented two draft texts which address, separately, the removal of US sanctions and Iran’s return to its nuclear commitments under the JCPOA. Tehran also said it was preparing a third draft text on the verification of the sanctions removal.

Iran and the G4+1 group of countries resumed the talks in the Austrian capital on December 9 after being paused on December 3, when the participants returned to their capitals for additional consultations on the two draft proposals that Tehran had put forward.

As the seventh round of discussions in Vienna concluded, Iran’s chief negotiator Ali Baqeri Kani said the three European parties to the JCPOA, also known as the E3, intimately agreed to accept Tehran’s viewpoint as a basis for “serious, result-oriented” talks.

The eighth round of talks for lifting anti-Iran sanctions kicked off on Monday evening local time, when Iranian top negotiator and the European Union’s representative in Vienna talks Enrique Mora co-chaired the Joint Commission meeting of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

In the meeting, which was held at Hotel Coburg in Vienna, delegations from Iran, the European Union and the Group 4+1 (Britain, France, Russia, China plus Germany) took part and discussed ways to continue the talks.

All negotiating teams pointed to progress made at the seventh round of the Vienna talks, underlining the need for keeping on with intensive negotiations.

The delegations also hinted to the fact that most Iranian proposals have been mentioned in a new joint document for the eighth round of talks.

At the end of Monday’s Joint Commission meeting, the negotiating teams agreed upon carrying on negotiations at different levels and formats.