Tehran: Iran’s First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref said on Wednesday that meeting and negotiating with US President Donald Trump, though not “impossible”, is not on Iran’s agenda at the moment, the official news agency IRNA reported.
Noting Iran’s strategies, especially in the defence sector, are “stable and permanent,” Aref told reporters on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting that under the fatwa, an Iranian religious decree, using nuclear technology for unpeaceful activities is prohibited.
Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said on the sidelines of the cabinet meeting that the “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran the United States just restored will fail again, according to IRNA.
“Regarding the remarks made by the US President last night, I maintain that the ‘maximum pressure’ has been a defeated experience, and retesting it will lead to another defeat,” Araghchi said.
“If the main issue is that Iran should not pursue nuclear weapons, this is achievable and not a difficult matter,” he said.
Iran is a committed member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and its positions are completely clear in that regard, he said, Xinhua news agency reported.
Also on Wednesday, President of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran Mohammad Eslami said Iran has no plan for developing nuclear weapons, and will not pursue such a plan in the future, IRNA reported.
Iran’s “peaceful” nuclear programme is being implemented within the framework of the regulations of the safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the NPT, Eslami said.
On Tuesday, shortly before meeting in the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump took an executive action to restore the “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran aimed at preventing it from obtaining nuclear weapons.
“We’re going to see they cannot have a nuclear weapon with me. It’s very simple. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office as he was signing the document — of which the exact content and form the White House has yet to make public, adding he hopes the measure will lead to a negotiated deal with Tehran.
Iran signed a nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), with world powers in July 2015, accepting restrictions on its nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.
However, the United States withdrew from the agreement in May 2018, reinstating sanctions and prompting Iran to scale back some of its nuclear commitments.
Efforts to revive the JCPOA commenced in April 2021 in Vienna, Austria, but despite multiple rounds of negotiations, no substantial progress has been reported since the last talks in August 2022.
(IANS)
