Deputy FM: Iran in no rush to re-engage in US talks without guarantees
Iran said it is in no hurry to engage in fresh round of negotiations with the United States unless Tehran is given sufficient guarantees that the talks would yield results.
In an interview with China’s Phoenix Television, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh said the US officials have sent many messages that they are ready to get back to the negotiation, but a recent aggression by Israel and the US against the Islamic Republic has changed many things.
Khatibzadeh said that the aggression against Iran happened amidst nuclear talks between Tehran and Washington.
Since April, Iran and the US have had held five rounds of negotiations to resolve a decades-old dispute over Tehran’s nuclear program. The two sides had agreed to gather in Rome for the sixth round of the talks on June 15.
However, the US ally, Israel, launched an unprovoked aggression against Iran on June 13, killing nearly 1,100 Iranians – most of them civilians – in 12 days of strikes on the country.
The US joined the aggression by targeting three Iranian nuclear sites.
“If anything happens in the future, that will be an armed negotiation. Our fingers will be on the trigger, because the other side has shown that it is untrustworthy,” Khatibzadeh said.
Addressing the future of cooperation between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), he said that Tehran intends to continue its collaboration with the agency, and that in the coming weeks, the IAEA inspectors will return to Iran.
Iran did not expel them but they left Tehran following Israel’s aggression, he added.
According to the official, Iran is committed to its responsibilities within the international community as it is a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the IAEA.
On July 30, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian put into effect a law passed by Parliament to suspend cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog after the strikes by Israel and the US. Iran has accused the IAEA of siding with Western countries and providing a justification for Israel's air strikes.