TEHRAN – European countries should not be influenced by U.S. pressure, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi told new European ambassadors to Iran in separate meetings on Monday.
President Raisi received the credentials of six new ambassadors from Switzerland, Kyrgyzstan, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, and Azerbaijan.
“Switzerland has always played a positive role in the maintenance and promotion of peace, and it is expected that in this new period it will be able to maintain its independent role in the face of unilateral U.S. policies,” Raisi said in his meeting with the new Swiss ambassador Christian Dussey.
He said Switzerland and other European countries must not be influenced by the United States’ pressures, in an apparent reference to Washington’s anti-Iran policies that also target third-party countries cooperating with Iran.
The Swiss diplomat, for his part, described Iran as a country with an ancient and brilliant civilization.
“Iran and Switzerland have had good relations in political, cultural, economic, and scientific fields for more than a hundred years,” Dussey noted, according to a readout of the meeting provided by the Iranian president’s official website.
He expressed hopes that Swiss companies and businesses would continue to operate inside Iran.
In his meeting with the new Belgian ambassador Gianmarco Rizzo, Raisi said Iran has always abided by its commitments, adding other countries must not be allowed to interfere in relations between Iran and European countries.
“European countries, whether regarding the JCPOA or with respect to other issues, should not act in such a way that the US would believe Europe is its sphere of influence,” Raeisi stated.
He added, “The United States seeks to spread and impose its oppressive will on the world, but other countries should not allow the US to continue its unilateralism and inroads into different parts of the world.”
European governments, however, have not fulfilled their obligations under the 2015 nuclear agreement, he told Rizzo.
At the meeting with Finnish Ambassador Kari Kahiluoto, Raisi insisted that Finland must distance itself from “U.S. expansionist policies, because U.S. unilateralism is not in the best interests of the world.”
Both parties in all separate meetings voiced readiness to expand the current level of bilateral cooperation.
Former U.S. president Donald Trump left the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in May 2018 and re-imposed the anti-Iran sanctions that the deal had lifted.
He also placed additional sanctions on Iran under other pretexts not related to the nuclear case as part of his “maximum pressure” campaign.
Following a year of strategic patience, Iran resorted to its legal rights stipulated in Article 26 of the JCPOA, which grants a party the right to suspend its contractual commitments in case of non-compliance by other signatories and let go of some of the restrictions imposed on its nuclear energy program.
Iran and the remaining parties to JCPOA have held six rounds of talks in Vienna, which began after the U.S. administration of Joe Biden voiced willingness to rejoin the nuclear agreement, three years after Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the deal and reinstated crippling sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
While disagreements on key issues persisted, the participants took a break from the talks after Raisi emerged victorious in Iran’s June presidential election, and waited for Iran’s democratic transition to take place to continue the talks.
The scope of the sanctions removal and the need for the U.S. to guarantee that it would not ditch the JCPOA again are among the key issues not settled during the administration of former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
In recent weeks, there has been mounting pressure on Tehran to return to the negotiating table. The Raeisi administration has announced on several occasions that it will resume the talks only to remove all of the United States’ illegal sanctions and that it will not take part in negotiations for the sake of negotiations.