Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday that negotiations on the country's missile programme were out of the question. Speaking to reporters at a press conference in Tehran, Rouhani also criticised the ongoing Turkish offensive in northern Syria, saying it was showing "no results". But many of the questions focused on the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, which is increasingly under threat from US President Donald Trump who has threatened to reimpose sanctions in May unless fresh curbs are put on Iran's missile programme and regional behaviour.
"We will negotiate with no one oon our weapons," Rouhani said. "Iranian-made missiles have never been offensive and never will be. They are defensive and are not designed to carry weapons of mass destruction, since we don't have any," he said. Rouhani reiterated that the nuclear deal, signed with six world powers, could not be renegotiated. "The key to the problems between Tehran and Washington is in Washington's hands. They need to stop their threats and sanctions and pressure, and automatically the situation will improve and we can think about our future," Rouhani said.
"The JCPOA (nuclear deal) is not negotiable, nor can it be rewritten," he added. "It was negotiated over 30 months before it was signed. It was approved by the UN Security Council. It is meaningless to say it can be renegotiated with the United States, the Europeans or anyone else." UN Security Council resolution 2231, which put the nuclear deal into force internationally, "urges" Iran to curb its ballistic missile tests, but this has been interpreted differently by various parties to the pact. The Europeans have tended to see subsequent missile tests as breaching the spirit of the deal, rather than as outright "violations" as the US has claimed.
Comments
Comments are closed.