“The behavior of some countries in the P5+1 group is completely contradictory and they are set to exert pressure on Iran,” Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior advisor to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, said in a Tuesday meeting with Wang Qun, China's envoy to the Iranian nuclear talks.
He added that efforts should be made to push the nuclear talks within an “appropriate” framework.
Velayati further pointed to the very important ties between Tehran and Beijing and said as Ayatollah Khamenei noted, the two countries should have “strategic” relations.
He added that Iran sets no limits on its relations with China.
Wang, for his part, said Iran has been more committed than other signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to its obligations, particularly after it clinched an interim nuclear deal with the P5+1 last November.
He said China insists that a final nuclear agreement should be reached between Iran and the P5+1.
Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council -- the United States, France, Britain, China, and Russia -- plus Germany are in talks to work out a final deal aimed at ending the longstanding dispute over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy program as a November 24 deadline approaches.
Sources close to the Iranian negotiating team say the main stumbling block in the way of resolving the Western dispute over Iran’s nuclear energy program remains to be the removal of all the bans imposed on the Islamic Republic and not the number of centrifuges or the level of uranium enrichment.
Tehran wants the sanctions entirely lifted while Washington, under pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby, insists that at least the UN-imposed sanctions should remain in place.
