TEHRAN, July 28 (Xinhua) -- The removal of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) from the U.S. sanctions list was not and is not Iran's precondition in the talks aimed at the reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, Mohammad Marandi, an advisor to the Iranian negotiating team, said on Thursday.

The West said that the IRGC's removal from U.S. terror designation list is a prerequisite for Iran to reach an agreement, but "it was not and is not the case," Marandi, also a professor at the University of Tehran, said in an interview with the Jamaran news website.

"They advertise in this way so that no one can notice that they are evading necessary guarantees," Marandi was quoted as saying.

Iran demands "sufficient" guarantees from the United States to secure its economic benefits under a possible agreement to rescue the deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), he noted.

"We must make sure that we will get economic benefits from any agreement and that the Americans cannot abuse its text," Marandi said.

Iran wants its concerns regarding the full implementation of a possible agreement to be addressed, given the "previous violations of the Western promises," he noted.

Iran signed the JCPOA with the world powers in July 2015, agreeing to curb its nuclear program in return for the removal of sanctions. However, former U.S. President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the agreement in May 2018 and reimposed unilateral sanctions on Iran, prompting the latter to drop some of its commitments under the pact.

Talks to revive the deal began in April 2021 in the Austrian capital Vienna but were suspended in March this year because of political differences between Tehran and Washington.

The two sides held indirect talks in Doha of Qatar late in June but still failed to settle their differences. Enditem

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