Speaker: Nuclear Talks Should Safeguard National Achievements

“It is important that the essence of the negotiations should be such that the negotiations safeguard our national achievements,” Larijani said while addressing a gathering of Friday prayers leaders in Iran's central holy city of Qom.

Iran and the Group 5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) are scheduled to start the next round of talks, aimed at reaching a comprehensive deal on Tehran’s peaceful nuclear program, from March 17 to 20 in the Austrian capital of Vienna.

They wrapped up the latest round of negotiations in Vienna last Thursday. It was the first round of high-level negotiations since a November interim deal, clinched between Iran and the G5+1.

On November 24, 2013, the two sides signed an interim six-month deal on Tehran’s nuclear program in the Swiss city of Geneva.

The breakthrough deal (the Joint Plan of Action), which has come into effect since January 20, stipulates that over the course of six months, Iran and the six countries will draw up a comprehensive nuclear deal which will lead to a lifting of the whole sanctions on Iran.

The Iranian parliament speaker further dismissed the western claim that sanctions have forced Iran to sit at the negotiation table, saying that it was the western countries that had refused to enter talks with Iran.

“They (western powers) could have resolved the issues more easily at some point in the past,” he said, “but they refused to do so.”

Elsewhere in his remarks, the top parliamentarian said the Islamic Republic has defeated the US dictatorship in the world by resisting against the enemies.

“Through (Iranian) people’s resistance against the enemies’ excessive demands, we have come to a point that no one talks about US-led global management any more,” he said, adding that Iran’s resistance has crushed the US hegemony in the world.