Larijani: Letter Damaged U.S.’ Legal Standing

Date: 15 March 2015 - 20:45

News ID: ۱۲۰۷۷

TEHRAN (Press TV) -- Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said here on Sunday a letter by U.S. Republican senators shows the influence of the Zionist lobby in the country’s political scene, saying the move undermined U.S.’s legal standing in the global community.
The senators’ move in writing the letter explains the reason behind the international community’s growing "distrust” in the U.S. administration, Larijani said on Sunday.
The top parliamentarian further slammed as "hollow” and "void” a speech by the occupying regime of Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu at a joint session of the U.S. Congress earlier this month, saying the American senators decided to send such a letter to Iran in another "thoughtless” move after the world ridiculed Netanyahu’s anti-Iran rant.
The letter dealt a heavy blow to the legal standing of the U.S. on the international stage, Larijani stressed.
In an unexpected move on Monday, 47 senators from the Republican party, commonly known as the GOP, issued a desperate warning to the Iranian officials on the validity of a potential nuclear deal, describing such an agreement as "nothing more than an executive agreement” which could be canceled by the next US president "by a stroke of a pen”.
The letter was sent days after Netanyahu said the White House was negotiating a "very bad nuclear deal” with the Islamic Republic in his address to U.S. Congressmen in early March.
Larijani further called on the Iranian negotiators to block any "reactionary measures” such as the loopholes suggested in the controversial letter in a possible agreement with the P5+1 group of countries over Tehran’s nuclear work.
Earlier in the week, Iranian Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif  condemned the letter as a publicity stunt without any legal value.
"It is very interesting that while negotiations are still in progress and while no agreement has been reached, some political pressure groups are so afraid of even the prospect of an agreement that they resort to unconventional methods, unprecedented in diplomatic history,” he said.