Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Aragchi, responded to US president Donald Trump’s decision to reimpose maximum economic sanctions on Iran by saying maximum pressure was a failed experiment, and trying it again will lead to another failure.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has long argued with US presidents that Iran is bent on covertly building a nuclear weapon. Iran does not disguise it has built up its stockpile of highly enriched uranium way beyond what was permitted under the 2015 nuclear deal, bit says it did so in response to Trump pulling out of that deal in 2018.
Some Iranians also seized on Trump’s statement that he was willing to talk to Iran’s leaders about its nuclear program, and his admission: “There are many people at the top ranks of Iran that do not want to have a nuclear weapon.” Trump added he did not care if he called the Iranians to arrange talks or the Iranians rang him.
His suggestion that Iran does not have monolithic politics leaves space for negotiations about a new nuclear deal to replace the one signed in 2015, and Trump withdrew the US from in 2018. Trump portrayed himself as a man that had signed the presidential memorandum against Iran reluctantly, adding he hoped the measures would never need to be used. He said at the signing ceremony:
Iranian officials argued that the US attempt to weaken Iran’s already heavily sanctioned economy would be hard to achieve since the bulk of Iranian revenue comes through the export of oil to China, often via intermediaries. The imposition of extra sanctions was seen as a bargaining chip ahead of negotiations on a nuclear deal akin to the imposition of tariffs on other countries.
Trump also said he has left posthumous instructions that Iran was to be totally obliterated if they assassinated a US president or anyone close to him. In his remarks in the Oval Office, overshadowed by his plan to annex Gaza, he also said the 7 October attack on Israel by Hamas would not have happened if the previous administration had continued to apply for economic pressure on Iran, suggesting Iran had been able to gather revenues to send to Hamas to mount the attack on Israel.
The issue of how Iran approaches any negotiations with the US over what it insists is a civil nuclear programme is politically explosive inside Iran with reports only this week denied by the foreign ministry that Ali Shamkani, the head of the national security commission, would lead as Iran’s representative at any talks.
So far the Iranian foreign ministry has led in the two rounds of talks in Geneva with the three European signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal: France, Germany and the UK. Europe has warned that it will move to reapply UN sanctions in September if a new deal is not agreed by then to replace the 2015 deal that expires this year.
Nothing in what Trump said gave any clue as to the kind of assurances the US would need to lift sanctions, and to be assured that Iran has no intent to build a nuclear bomb. He did not indicate that the US would be seeking a wider deal with Iran that seeks to constrain its support for proxy forces in the region
Iran has slashed back the access UN weapons inspectors have to Iran’s nuclear sites. Both the UN inspectorate, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the European countries have said it is possible Iran has acquired irreversible knowledge on how to build nuclear weapons.
He added that unlike Israel “which is not a member of any international treaty banning weapons of mass destruction and explicitly threatened to use nuclear weapons in the war against the people of Gaza, the Islamic Republic of Iran is a member of the non-proliferation treaty and Iran’s nuclear programme is under the full supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency in accordance with safeguards agreements”.
Basically, the Islamic Republic of Iran considers weapons of mass destruction to be haram for solid Islamic and humanitarian reasons.