Iranian Foreign Minister and chief nuclear negotiator Mohammad Javad Zarif finally testified before parliament’s special committee to review the comprehensive nuclear deal between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (P5+1).

The Sept. 13 hearing was the first time that Zarif, who had been traveling in the region, was able to respond to accusations made by former negotiator Saeed Jalili during testimony to parliament earlier this month. While Zarif said he did not intend to answer Jalili’s accusations directly, he did say that contrary to Jalili’s comments, Iran’s nuclear file had been an exceptional case for seven years (in the sense that Iran would negotiate with the international community about its nuclear program, but about little if nothing else). Jalili was head negotiator from 2007 to 2013 — years that a number of UN Security Council resolutions against Iran were passed because of its nuclear program.

Zarif praised his deputies, Seyed Abbas Araghchi and Majid Takht-Ravanchi, for being able to negotiate the country out of the UN sanctions. He said that this was the first time a country was able to negotiate out of Chapter 7 UN sanctions, saying that it took 10 years after Saddam Hussein’s downfall for Chapter 7 sanctions on Iraq to be removed.

Zarif said that the “reversibility,” or the so-called snapback of sanctions, was a compromise in order to remove sanctions at once. Comparing his team to Jalili’s team on the issue of sanctions, Zarif said the last suggestion the P5+1 side gave to Jalili’s team was the removal of oil sanctions in return for fundamental changes on the nuclear program and there was no talk of removing UN sanctions. Since the P5+1 wanted to remove sanctions step by step, according to Zarif, and Iran wanted the sanctions removed immediately, the compromise of “reversibility” of sanctions was introduced.