The News
Iran wants all parties to abide by the terms of the now-scuttled 2015 nuclear accord with the US and other major powers before discussing any new agreement, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Monday.
“We are still ready to live up to the same framework,” he told a roundtable of journalists in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. The nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and signed by Iran, the US, China, France, Russia, the UK, the EU and Germany, was intended to keep Tehran’s nuclear ambitions in check. Then-US President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled out of the agreement in 2018, an action Pezeshkian described as “illegal, unfair, and unjust.”
“We lived up to every commitment that we had under that agreement,” he said. “Let’s go back to step one. Let’s make sure you live up to your commitments.”
He did not address whether or how Iran would reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium to comply with the terms of the deal, which restricts Tehran to enriching uranium only up to 3.67%. Iran announced in 2020 that it would no longer be bound by the deal’s terms; the International Atomic Energy Agency said earlier this year that Tehran has an estimated 165 kg (360 lb) of 60% pure uranium and that it was not cooperating with inspectors.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who is also in New York, said in a video posted to Telegram earlier on Monday that the country was “focused on initiating a new round of nuclear negotiations” during this trip in the US.
Pezeshkian on Monday blamed Israel for stoking tensions in the region and declared “we don’t want war,” when asked about escalating attacks between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese political party and paramilitary group.
“We know more than anyone else that if a larger war were to erupt in the Middle East, it will not benefit anyone throughout the world. It is Israel that seeks to create this wider conflict,” he said.