Tehran, IRNA – President Masoud Pezeshkian says Iran is ready for negotiations with the United States that are based on equal terms and in keeping with Iranian “honor and wisdom.”
In an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, and according to a Persian transcript published by IRNA, the president said that Iran was ready for negotiations, but on certain terms.
“We have always been ready for negotiations. What we are concerned about and what has been borne out and resulted in the negotiations failing is that, forever, we have been negotiating and we have been upholding our side [of the deal] and the other side has been seeking to exert pressure,” the Iranian president said.
“We must be ensured that the other side will adhere to what is written down on paper and signed,” he added.
President Pezeshkian said Iran would be fine with negotiations if Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and the rest of the government trusted that the other side would comply with its own obligations.
“They can’t impose sanctions by the day and then expect us to negotiate at the same time,” the president said. “If you genuinely seek peace and tranquility in the [West Asia] region, why do you keep sanctioning and threatening us everyday? Why do you dispatch individuals who would assassinate a group of innocent people in [our] society?”
He said Iran was not after building a nuclear bomb. “When we say we’re not [after a nuclear bomb], how much clearer can one be?”
The Iranian president said that when he took office, Iran held talks with Europe to clear out any concerns. “Even when we were in New York [for the United Nations General Assembly], we held talks with […] the Americans themselves indirectly. But unfortunately, the Zionist regime disrupted this contact and these conversations with a range of activities that started with the assassination of [Ismail] Haniyeh.”
He rejected pressure meant to steer Iran away from its goals and said the country was ready for talks.
“We are ready for negotiations; we would agree to talks that would be on equal terms and in keeping with our own honor and wisdom and will by no means submit to force,” President Pezeshkian said
Holding talks is not the problem but “commitments” that we must adhere to after those talks, which “unfortunately lacked in the past negotiations”, he said in response to the question whether Iran is ready for direct and open talks with Washington or the next US administration.
“We adhered to all commitments following the talks that took place for a long time with 5+1 [countries] but it was the other side that failed to abide by”, the Iranian president said, adding that “a kind of distrust” prevails in Iran that “no matter how much we negotiate” they are not after “solving the problem but overthrowing us.”
Referring to sanctions imposed on the country under different pretexts, the president said “Iran suffered from those sanctions and pressure but still made great achievements”.
“No matter how much they increase the pressure, we will continue to search for and find ways out”, he added.
Pezeshkian also called for regional peace, saying Iran is not looking for war and bloodshed or fighting and unrest. “It is the Zionist regime that is destroying the region,” he said while referring to recent wars and aggression and Israel’s long-standing opposition to the JCPOA [2015 nuclear deal].
“Netanyahu [Israeli PM] had publicly announced that he would do everything to prevent the JCPOA from coming to fruition”, he said.
We have said time and again that we are not seeking bombs or nuclear weapons, and we have always allowed international inspection of our nuclear sites but what is being escalated is just to create “Iranophobia”, Pezeshkian clarified.
They constantly want to insinuate to the world that we are moving toward producing nuclear weapons, and on this basis they want to pile up pressure and impose sanctions, he noted.
“As I said, we have no problem with talks and even the leader of the Islamic Revolution supports the process but there must be a certainty that they yield results, not that talks are for the sake of talks” he said when asked about the potential future talks with the West, including the US.
Even now, Iran and European countries are holding talks and in no way, we want to disrupt that process, Pezeshkian referred to recent meetings in Geneva between officials from Iran and three European countries - the UK, France and Germany [European Troika] - whether they agreed to pursue the negotiations aimed at lifting sanctions.
During the interview, Pezeshkian also addressed other regional issues, including the developments in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and the Gaza Strip and said these won’t affect Iran’s “internal cohesion” or “intimate relations with its neighbors.”
"We Iranians never initiated a war at least in the past 250 years and even now, we are not thinking of invading or attacking a country and a place. We respect the territorial integrity of all countries", Pezeshkian said.
The Iranian president reiterated that Iran is not and will not be looking for war and conflict in the region but warned of “a crushing response” when asked about what Iran will do if Israel and the United States attacked the country.
"We will respond to them quickly, and then they will see that it is not as simple as they think", he added.
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