‘Unacceptable’: Pezeshkian nixes US nuclear demand, vows to overcome sanctions
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Saturday slammed as "unacceptable" US demands that Tehran hand over its enriched uranium in exchange for a three-month reprieve from sanctions.
The United States "wants us to hand over all our enriched uranium to them, and in return they would give us three months" exemption from sanctions, Pezeshkian told reporters in New York before leaving for Tehran.
"This is by no means acceptable," he said.
He previously said France had made a similar proposal, offering only a one-month delay for the sanctions that will take effect on Sunday after the UN General Assembly on Friday failed to adopt a resolution that would have extended sanctions relief for Iran for another six months under the 2015 nuclear deal.
"Why would we put ourselves in such a trap and have a noose around our neck each month?" he asked, accusing the US of pressuring Europeans not to compromise.
Despite Iran’s cooperation with the UN nuclear agency, Western powers have claimed that they saw insufficient progress to justify delaying sanctions, after a week of top-level diplomacy at the UN General Assembly.
European powers, France, Germany and Britain, triggered the so-called “snapback" mechanism a month ago, which reimposes international sanctions removed under the nuclear deal.
Efforts to overthrow Islamic Republic
Pezeshkian reiterated that Iran had no intention of developing nuclear weapons, stressing that Washington and Israel were instead using pressure to try to overthrow the Islamic Republic.
Talks over Iran's nuclear program had also involved Steve Witkoff – Special Envoy of US President Donald Trump – who said Washington did not want to harm Iran and was open to further discussions.
But Pezeshkian dismissed Witkoff as unserious, saying he backtracked on earlier understandings that collapsed after Israel launched its latest military campaign against Iran in June.
The sanctions are aimed at imposing new economic pain to pressure Iran, but it remains to be seen if all countries will enforce them.
Dmitry Polyansky, the Russian deputy ambassador, said Friday that Moscow, a top partner of Iran, considered the reimposition of sanctions "null and void."
Measures to counter sanctions
The Iranian president assured that “necessary measures have been taken” for this scenario, citing Iran’s alliances with neighbors, BRICS, and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) countries, as well as the resilience of the Iranian people, as reasons the nation would “overcome this situation.”
The US already has unilateral sanctions on Iran and has tried to force all other countries to stop buying Iranian oil, although companies from China have defied the pressure.
Trump imposed a "maximum pressure" campaign during his first term when he withdrew from a landmark 2015 nuclear agreement negotiated under former president Barack Obama, which had offered sanctions relief in return for curbs on Iran's nuclear program.
Pezeshkian said that Iran would not retaliate against the sanctions by leaving the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), warning that unnamed powers were seeking a "superficial pretext to set the region ablaze."