Iran's Raisi calls for revival of JCPOA deal, rules out meeting Biden

London (Quantum Commodity Intelligence) – Iran's president-elect Ebrahim Raisi said his priorities would be to improve ties with regional neighbors and revive the 2015 nuclear deal, but ruled out any meeting with US President Joe Biden. 

Speaking at his first press conference since the election, Raisi told national and international media, "we support the negotiations that guarantee our national interests. America should immediately return to the (2015) deal and fulfill its obligations under the deal."

The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs to its nuclear program. Raisi is himself under US sanctions.

Raisi further called on Biden to lift all sanctions before adding that Iran's ballistic missile program "is not up for negotiation," in response to a question from CNN.

Meanwhile, an Iranian parliamentary report claimed the US has designed a network of "legal" barriers to delay the lifting of economic sanctions, reported the English-language Tehran Times.

The latest round of talks aimed at reviving the JCPOA deal ended in Vienna on Sunday without a breakthrough, although diplomats said further progress was made.

'We are closer than we were one week ago, but we are still not there," said European Union negotiator Enrique Mora. "We have made progress on a number of technical issues, we have more clarity."

Mr Raisi, a hard-line cleric who is head of Iran's judiciary and is close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, won Friday's election by a landslide with 62% of the vote in the first round.

However, turnout was just under 49% - a record low for a presidential poll in the country since the 1979 Islamic Revolution - following calls for a boycott from opponents.

Oil markets have increasingly discounted the lifting of sanctions in the short-term, as Brent traded above $75/b Tuesday for the first time since April 2019.