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Iran cannot enter doomed-to-fail nuclear negotiations: Deputy FM to CNN
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh said Iran cannot enter a nuclear negotiation that is doomed to failure and ultimately becomes a pretext for another war.
He made the remarks in response to a question about possible resumption of nuclear talks with the United States in an exclusive interview with CNN.
Khatibzadeh said that if the US accepts the logic of negotiation and abandons some of its illusions and stops its plot to use political-diplomatic tools to achieve what it failed to through a military campaign, “then we can proceed within the framework of the directives of the Leader."
Any future dialogue with the US over Iran’s nuclear program would be contingent on an agreement that would allow Iran to pursue uranium enrichment, he underlined.
“Delusions of zero enrichment inside Iran or trying to deprive Iran from its basic rights is not going to be an option for Iran.”
Iran and the United States held five rounds of negotiations through Omani mediators before Israel launched a 12-day aggression against the country on June 13.
US President Donald Trump’s decision to join Israel in striking Iranian nuclear facilities effectively ended the talks which were set to resume on June 15. The aggression claimed the lives of more than 1,000 Iranians, most of them civilians.
Separately, Khatibzadeh said Iran has “legitimate military programs to defend our national interests and our national security.” Asked by CNN if Tehran is expanding its missile program, he said the program was going through “repair and recovery” following the Israel’s aggression against Iran in June.
Khatibzadeh also described his country’s nuclear program as still “intact” despite the damage caused by US and Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities including Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.
Trump initially claimed that Fordow had been obliterated. An early US intelligence assessment suggested that the three nuclear facilities had been badly damaged, but Iran’s nuclear program may have only been set back by up to two years.
While Khatibzadeh said that Israeli and US strikes had “ruined many of our infrastructure, machineries” and “buildings,” he noted that the nuclear program was “very much based on our indigenous knowledge, very much spread across our country, which is a huge country – 90 million people.”
“And this country is not a country that you can bomb and then think that you are going to ruin everything,” the minister said.
Khatibzadeh’s assessment comes as Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday that no uranium enrichment was taking place “right now” because the country’s enrichment facilities had been “attacked.” The enrichment process produces fuel for nuclear power plants.
Asked if he had a message to the Trump administration regarding its relationship with Iran, the deputy minister said his country is the “oldest living, continuous civilization on earth… This country and this nation are (a) master of survival.”