Zarif made the remarks in an exclusive interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Monday.
The foreign minister said the Biden administration has a "limited window of opportunity" to re-enter the 2015 nuclear agreement from which the former US administration withdrew unilaterally in May 2018.
"The time for the United States to come back to the nuclear agreement is not unlimited," he said adding, "The United States has a limited window of opportunity, because President Biden does not want to portray himself as trying to take advantage of the failed policies of the former Trump administration."
Asked just how swiftly Iran could scale back its uranium enrichment program to comply with the nuclear deal if the US lifts sanctions, Zarif said, "8,000 pounds of enriched uranium can go back to the previous amount in less than a day."
"If we wanted to build a nuclear weapon we could have done it some time ago.
"But we decided that nuclear weapons are not, would not augment our security and are in contradiction to our, eh, ideological views. And that is why we never pursued nuclear weapons," Zarif noted.
Iran "acted in strict accordance with the nuclear agreement," and now it is the United States' turn to come back to compliance, Zarif underlined
After the US withdrawal under the presidency of Donald Trump from the Iran Deal, Washington imposed the highest level of sanctions against Tehran.
1483**1416
Follow us on Twitter @IrnaEnglish
Your Comment