US advised to adopt ‘maximum rationality’ rather than ‘maximum pressure’: Araghchi
Iran’s foreign minister advised the US to adopt the policy of “maximum rationality” instead of “maximum pressure” as the new government in Washington will take office in January.
“As they admitted before, we have defeated the maximum pressure,” Abbas Araghchi said during a joint press conference with visiting Syrian counterpart Bassam al-Sabbagh.
“Whenever, they have adopted a policy of maximum pressure, we have also adopted a policy of maximum resistance,” Araghchi added.
“We advise them to adopt the policy of maximum rationality instead of maximum pressure. So, they will probably get a different result.”
US President-elect Donald Trump adopted the strategy of the maximum pressure against Iran after he announced the withdrawal of the US from the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement in 2018.
The campaign was aimed at pressuring Iran to renegotiate the nuclear deal, adding more restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program and expanding the scope of the agreement to cover Iran’s ballistic missiles as well as other regional activities.
People familiar with Trump’s thinking have recently said that his administration would try to “bankrupt” Iran to force the Islamic Republic into talks.
Response to Israel’s strike
The top Iranian diplomat in a separate meeting on Tuesday, reiterated that Iran has not foregone its right to respond to the Israeli regime’s most recent act of aggression, emphasizing that Tehran will decide when to carry out the retaliatory operation.
“We have not renounced our right to react [to Israel] and will show a reaction in due time and in a manner, we deem appropriate,” Araghchi said.
Araghchi said that the Foreign Ministry would never take knee-jerk decisions, saying Iran has already given a response after considering the overall conditions as well as probabilities and plots that may have been hatched against Iran, so that it could prevent the spillover of war.
In the early hours of October 26, Israeli warplanes used US-controlled airspace over Iraq to fire projectiles at military installations in Iran’s Tehran, Khuzestan, and Ilam provinces in flagrant breach of the country’s national sovereignty.