Iran FM: U.S. Sending Messages and Stirring Riots

Date: 23 October 2022 - 21:18

News ID: ۱۰۸۱۴۷

TEHRAN -- The Iranian

foreign minister says Tehran has received a new message from the United States on the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal, emphasizing that the Islamic Republic never leaves the negotiating table but will not give any concession to the American side either.

“We will not give any concession to the American side and will proceed within the framework of logic and the framework of an agreement that observes the Islamic Republic of Iran’s red lines, but at the same time we will never leave the negotiating table,” Hussein Amir-Abdollahian told reporters in Yerevan.

Pointing to American officials’ remarks that the talks on the revival of the nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), are no longer on the agenda, the top Iranian diplomat noted that that Washington’s “words contradict its behavior.”

“In their message, they (the Americans) are in a hurry to reach the point of an agreement as soon as possible,” he added.

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on Friday said the United States is still interested in reviving the JCPOA and that diplomacy is the best way to approach this issue. He, however, added that an agreement again is unlikely.

“We continue to believe that diplomacy is the best way to do that. At this moment, there’s no prospect for an agreement again, because Iran continues to inject extraneous issues into the conversations that we’ve had in the European Union,” Blinken claimed following a meeting with his French counterpart.

In an interview with CNN on Monday, U.S. special envoy for Iran Robert Malley also said, “Right now the talks on revival of JCPOA are not on the U.S. agenda”, trying to shift the blame on Tehran for the stalled diplomatic process.

In response to the U.S. message which was received three days ago, Amir-Abdollahian said that Iran has told the American side that the accusations leveled by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) against the country’s nuclear program must be settled.

Iran would not agree to strike an agreement with the IAEA, which intends to exert pressure on Iran through political means, the foreign minister emphasized.
He slammed the contradiction in the U.S. officials’ words and deeds, saying, “While the Americans continue the exchange of messages with us, they are trying to fan the flames of the issues that were taking place inside Iran in the past days.”
“I think they seek to put political and psychological pressures in order to gain concessions in the negotiations,” Amir-Abdollahian pointed out.
The current crisis over Iran’s nuclear program was created in May 2018, when former U.S. president Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the 2015 nuclear deal and imposed tough economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic under what he called the “maximum pressure” policy.
The talks to salvage the agreement kicked off in the Austrian capital of Vienna in April last year, months after Joe Biden succeeded Trump, with the intention of examining Washington’s seriousness in rejoining the deal and removing anti-Iran sanctions.
Iran has demanded that the United States provide assurances that it would not leave the JCPOA again before it could reenter the agreement. Washington has refused to give a legally enforceable guarantee, leaving Iranian negotiators suspicious of the Biden administration’s seriousness in the talks.