Iran missiles not on nuclear talks agenda: Russia

Iran’s missile program has never been discussed in the talks between Tehran and the P5+1 group, and is not part of the Geneva interim deal, the Russian foreign minister says.

“The missile program of Iranians was never part of the discussion, and it was not part of the deal signed in Geneva last November,” Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Russia Today on Wednesday.

Iran and the six world powers – the United States, France, Britain, Russia, China and Germany – sealed the interim deal in Geneva on November 24, 2013, to pave the way for the full resolution of the decade-old dispute over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy program. The deal came into force on January 20.

In February, Wendy Sherman, the US top nuclear negotiator at the talks with Iran, said during a Senate hearing that the Islamic Republic’s ballistic missile program would be addressed as part of a comprehensive nuclear deal.

White House National Security Council (NSC) Spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan also told the Washington Free Beacon website in February that the US aims to stop Iran’s missile tests under a final deal over Tehran’s nuclear energy program.

However, Iranian officials have time and again stressed that the nuclear issue will be the only subject on the agenda of the talks between Iran and the six powers and that Tehran will not negotiate over its missile capabilities.

“The deal was very blunt. But as the deal started to be implemented the Americans began to load it with new demands,” Lavrov said.

The Russian diplomat said that every time a deal is signed, “the Americans start to put the blame for any delay on others or, even worse, they start to throw in new demands which absolutely contradict the reached consensus.”