Iran is demanding during the nuclear talks in Vienna that the U.S. remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from a blacklist of foreign terrorist organizations as a condition for a nuclear deal, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Sunday.
Why it matters: Bennett used a speech to representatives of U.S. Jewish organizations in Jerusalem to highlight the remaining gaps between the U.S. and Iran as the talks approach the finish line.
Driving the news: Bennett, who opposes a U.S. return to the nuclear deal, did not say whether the Biden administration had agreed to reverse Donald Trump's 2019 decision to blacklist the IRGC, a powerful branch of Iran's military with close links to the supreme leader.
- He did say the U.S. had thus far rejected another Iranian demand, that an International Atomic Energy Agency investigation into the potential military dimension of Iran's nuclear program be closed.
- But Bennett said that the U.S. and the European signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal had agreed to allow Iran to keep its advanced centrifuges in storage inside Iran rather than destroy them.
- Another sticking point in the talks is Iran's demand for assurances that it will get the expected economic benefits from a return to the deal and that no future U.S. administration will abandon it as Trump did.
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