Minister Says Iran Will Return To Nuke Talks 'Very Soon'

Iran’s new foreign minister said Friday (Saturday, Sept. 25, 2021, in Manila) the country will return to nuclear negotiations “very soon,” but accused the Biden administration of sending contradictory messages — saying it wants to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal while slapping new sanctions on Tehran and not taking “an iota of positive action,” Edith M. Lederer reported for the Associated Press (AP).

Photo Insert: Iran's newly appointed Foreign Minister, Hossain Amir Abdollah

Hossain Amir Abdollah said the government, which took power last month, believes that President Joe Biden “keeps carrying close to his heart the thick file of the Trump sanctions against Iran, even while seemingly pursuing negotiations.”

Defeated former president Donald Trump routinely denounced the nuclear accord as the “worst deal ever negotiated” and withdrew from the agreement in 2018 after an ill-fated attempt to bring the other parties — Britain, France, Russia, China, Germany, and Iran — on board with additional restrictions.

After withdrawing, Trump embarked on what he called a “maximum pressure campaign” against Iran, re-imposing all the US sanctions that had been eased under the deal and adding penalties.

In a media briefing on Iran’s new foreign policy, Amir Abdollah was very skeptical about the Biden administration’s real intentions, stressing that actions are more important than “empty but beautiful words,” and so is “the comportment” and “behavior” of the US toward Iran.

Iran’s top diplomat sharply criticized additional sanctions imposed by the Biden administration, as well as its refusal to give a green light for Iran to access millions of dollars of its money frozen in South Korea and Japanese banks to buy COVID-19 vaccines and medicine, and suddenly asking Britain to stop payment of 42-year-old debts.

While “standing up new sanctions against Iran,” he said, the US can’t keep speaking of returning to the nuclear deal, even holding bilateral talks with Iran, and criticizing Trump policies. This includes telling Iran — through diplomatic channels — that Biden wouldn’t have ordered the US airstrike that Trump did in January 2020 which killed Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani.

Recalling that Iranians have a long, rich history and ancient civilization behind them, Amir Abdollah said “the US must speak with a civilized tone and tongue with the people of Iran, not the language of threats, of pressure and sanctions.”

The past 42 years, since the Iranian revolution, have “made clear the language of threats will not work against the great people of Iran.”

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