Vienna (IP) - Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs and chief nuclear negotiator says differences in Vienna talks on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) have been reduced.

Iran PressEurope: Ali Bagheri Kani highlighted two issues concerning the differences over the negotiations; The first dealt with the two sides' views about the topics' around, and the second dealt with the topics themselves.

"In the interactions with the other parties, we are trying to reach a joint conclusion so that the issues of disagreement can be formulated in a framework," Bagheri Kani said on Sunday. 

Bagheri Kani also told Al-Mayadin News Network that the talks were successful but also clarified that the Israelis are trying to destroy the negotiations.

"It is quite clear that Russia and China are in line with Iran's position, and there is also the issue of differences with the West," Bagheri Kani noted,

Since Friday, negotiators from Iran and the P4+1 group of countries – China, Russia, France, Britain, plus Germany – have been holding expert sessions to discuss the very proposals the Europeans called unrealistic and maximalist. 

With the start of the seventh round of talks in Vienna on Friday, the parties to the negotiations held discussions about the texts of Iran's proposed drafts on sanctions removal and nuclear issues during their sessions at different levels, and within different formats, the Iranian foreign ministry said. 

In addition to expert sessions, talks and consultations continued at different levels on Saturday.

Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia's envoy to the talks, said on Sunday that the talks are proceeding smoothly. "The Vienna Talks are underway. A number of meetings in various formats are planned for today. Numerous outstanding issues still remain on the agenda but now, after the break last week, they are addressed properly in accordance with norms and rules of multilateral diplomacy," he said on Twitter on Sunday.

Earlier, he had expressed surprise at the gloomy Western media narratives of the talks.

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"To my surprise some analysts and journalists describe the situation at the Vienna Talks as dramatic, 'almost deadlock.' This is not the case in point. After the break the negotiators returned to normal diplomatic business and maintain intensive dialogue. Atmosphere is positive," the Russian diplomat said. 

The bleak Western outlook has been decried by observers in Iran and beyond as a negotiating tactic aimed at getting more concessions from Iran, ones that go beyond the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the JCPOA.

The E3, together with the US, started using this tactic even before the seventh round began. According to an Al-Araby Al-Jadeed report, the Americans and the Europeans warned that they would withdraw from the talks if Iran insisted on a new agenda for the talks and backtracked on what was achieved during the past six rounds, which ended on June 20 amid presidential transition in Iran. 

But what the Europeans warn of is nothing other than Iran's insistence on reviving the original JCPOA without any addition. On the other, the E3 is pushing for a revised version of the original JCPOA. 

Despite European propaganda about Iran's alleged intransigence at the talks, it came to light that the E3 crusty diplomats have pushed for non-JCPOA issues to be included in the negotiations, something that Iran strongly rejected.

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