Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has defended Tehran’s breaches of the nuclear deal as seeking to “restore balance” following the US exit from the pact and the imposition of sanctions against the country.
“If the United States withdraws its illegal sanctions and fulfills its obligations under the nuclear deal, Iran will reverse all the steps it has taken in remedy,” Zarif said in a conversation with his Finnish counterpart, Pekka Haavisto, according to a ministry statement.
Thus, he has again affirmed that the sanctions applied by the United States after its unilateral exit from the agreement in 2018 are “cruel and illegal” and has criticized the European countries signatories of the pact–France, the United Kingdom and Germany–known as the E3, for their lack of action in the face of the same.
Zarif has further emphasized through his account on the social network Twitter that the agreement “has been implemented only by Iran.” “Instead of gesticulating, the United States and the E3 should fulfill the commitments they adopted and never fulfilled,” he reiterated.
For his part, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi has rejected any talks on the terms of the nuclear deal and stressed that Tehran “will never accept a renegotiation.” “We oppose the inclusion of any new articles,” he added.
“Compliance with the nuclear deal means that no words should be added or taken away. This is clear,” he has defended during an interview to Al Masirah TV channel, as reported by the Iranian news agency Tasnim.
Likewise, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has called US leaders “false”, “treacherous” and “greedy”. “They are liars in every possible way, they speak deceitfully,” he has denounced during a speech, according to Iran’s Mehr news agency.
“They are oppressive and cruel. They are also terrorists. They have all the qualities of good people,” ironized Khamenei, who criticized the “hypocrisy” of the United States in saying that it defends non-proliferation despite being the only country to have used atomic bombs in the framework of a war.
The statements from Tehran come just two days after the spokesman of the Iranian Executive, Ali Rabiei, asked the White House to return to the 2015 nuclear agreement “without conditions” and “not to complicate the path towards diplomacy” to resolve the situation.
The Iranian authorities have so far announced the withdrawal of their commitments on several of the points of the agreement, which has provoked fears in the rest of the signatories of a possible collapse of the pact. However, Tehran has defended at all times that these steps can be reversed if the United States withdraws the sanctions and returns to the agreement.
