ROME: On Thursday, Iran’s foreign minister urged US President-elect Joe Biden to leave the “rogue” actions of Washington and lift debilitating sanctions on his government, dismissing talk of renegotiating the nuclear deal in 2015.
Mohammad Javad Zarif said the United States had ignored a UN Security Council resolution approving it after President Donald Trump abandoned the historic deal.
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“In an online interview held as part of the Mediterranean Dialogues event hosted by Italy, Zarif said, “The US has been in grave violation of the resolution since the Trump administration was a rogue government.
“Now if President-elect Biden wants to continue to be a rogue regime, he can continue to call for negotiations to fulfil his obligations,” he said.
The United States must stop, and the United States must stop its international law violations. After Trump abruptly withdrawn from the nuclear deal in 2018 and reimposed, then hardened, sanctions that hammered Iran’s economy, decades of US-Iranian tensions intensified. It does not require talks.
Biden has stated that he would return the US to an arrangement providing Tehran exemption from foreign sanctions in exchange for assurances checked by the United Nations that there are no strategic targets in its nuclear programme.
Outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo released veiled criticism of Biden as he celebrated Iranian-American Mohammad Bagher Namazi’s 84th birthday, who on ambiguous security charges, remains in jail along with his businessman’s son and at least one other US resident.
Until these men are released, no agreements should be made with Iran,” Pompeo wrote on Twitter.”
Today, Baquer Namazi turns 84 years old. He has been unable to leave Iran since his wrongful detention over 4 years ago. His son, Siamak, and Morad Tahbaz, also American citizens, still suffer in Evin Prison. There should be no deals with Iran until these men are released.
— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) December 3, 2020
This week, Biden told The New York Times that if Iran returned to conformity, the US would rejoin, aiming to tighten Iran’s nuclear controls and raising questions regarding both its missile programme and Iran’s funding for the region’s militants.
Yet Zarif said We are not going to renegotiate the deal we negotiated.”
And he added that before criticising Iran, Western powers should look at their own actions.
“The West exported more weapons to the Persian Gulf last year than it sold to any other region of the planet. This field has sold over $100 billion worth of arms. Is the West ready for this malignant activity to stop? “Said Zarif.
He also complained about what he described as a lack of European outrage at last week’s assassination outside Tehran of one of Iran’s leading nuclear scientists, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, an attack that Tehran blamed on Israel.
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