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Iran says new US sanctions show talk offers hollow, block diplomacy
TEHRAN, June 25, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Iran vehemently responded Tuesday to
new US sanctions against its leaders, saying they showed Washington was
“lying” about an offer of talks and marked the end of diplomacy with the
Trump administration, amid an escalating regional standoff.
Washington blacklisted Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and top
military chiefs on Monday, saying it would also sanction Foreign Minister
Mohammad Javad Zarif later in the week.
“At the same time as you call for negotiations you seek to sanction the
foreign minister? It’s obvious that you’re lying,” Rouhani said in a meeting
with ministers, broadcast live on TV.
His comments came as US National Security Advisor John Bolton, on a visit
to Iran’s arch-enemy Israel, said Washington had “held the door open to real
negotiations” but that “in response, Iran’s silence has been deafening”.
Iran and the US broke off diplomatic relations in 1980 over the hostage
crisis at the US embassy in Tehran following Iran’s Islamic revolution.
Tensions between them have been escalating since US President Donald Trump
unilaterally withdrew last year from a landmark 2015 nuclear deal with Iran
and reimposed sanctions on the Islamic republic.
Trump has since moved to choke Iran’s economy, blacklisted Iran’s
Revolutionary Guards as a “terrorist organisation” and nearly launched a
military strike in retaliation to Iran downing a US spy drone.
Zarif said the drone had violated Iranian airspace, a claim the US denies.
But Russia, a key ally of Tehran, on Tuesday backed Zarif’s version of
events.
Washington has also blamed Iran for mid-June attacks on two tankers in
sensitive Gulf waters, a claim Iran hotly refutes.
Trump has said he is ready to negotiate with Iran “with no preconditions”
and that Iran could have a “phenomenal future”.
“We do not ask for conflict,” he said, adding that depending on Iran’s
response, sanctions could end tomorrow or “years from now.”
But Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said Tuesday that the
new sanctions meant “permanent closure of the path to diplomacy with Trump’s
desperate government.”
Rouhani also mocked the logic of blacklisting the supreme leader, who has
few assets and no plans to visit the US.
“To sanction (the supreme leader) for what? Not to travel to America?
That’s cute,” he said.
– Diplomacy over? –
Rouhani noted that there had been chances for talks between the two sides.
Zarif met former US secretary of state Rex Tillerson several times before
Washington unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear deal in May 2018 and
reimposed sanctions on Iran.
“You do not seek to negotiate. If you did, we could have,” Rouhani said.
Zarif, a political moderate, was a key architect of the deal under which
Iran agreed to curb its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.
But both he and Rouhani have accused Washington of waging an “economic
war” on Iran since pulling out of the accord.
Tehran has threatened to scale down some of its commitments under the deal
unless the remaining international parties — the Britain, China, France,
Russia and Germany — help it circumvent US sanctions, particularly through
vital oil exports.
But US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday he was working to build
what he called a “global coalition” against the Islamic republic.
Amid a flurry of diplomatic activity, the UN Security Council issued a
unanimous call for dialogue to address the standoff between the United States
and Iran.
China on Tuesday urged “calm and restraint” as tensions grew.
“We believe that blindly applying maximum pressure will not help solve the
problem,” said Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang at a press
briefing in Beijing.
“Facts have proved that these measures have had the opposite effect and
aggravated regional unrest,” he added.
French President Emmanuel Macron said he would use a meeting with Trump at
the G20 summit in Japan to urge “a constructive solution with the aim of
ensuring collective regional security.”
BSS/AFP/RY/1740 hrs