August 19, 2016
The removal of sanctions was not the sole goal of Iran in the nuclear negotiations, Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif told reporters last Wednesday.
In a meeting with Iranian journalists, he said Iran negotiated with the Big Six to guarantee its “national dignity.”
The nuclear agreement, he said, helped win recognition of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program by the world and helped preserve the nuclear, scientific and technical achievements of the Islamic Republic.
He said that the agreement prevented the shutdown of Iran’s nuclear facilities and led to cancellation of the UN Security Council resolutions against the Islamic Republic.
Zarif said ending the “unsubstantiated claims” made by the Americans against Iran’s “peaceful nuclear program” was another goal of Iran in the nuclear talks. However, the United States has not backed off its assertions that Iran had an active nuclear weapons program up to 2003.
Zarif said the main beef “certain states” have with Iran is its policy of reaching its “full strategic capacity.” And that is why those “certain states” are doing everything to stop Iran from achieving this goal, Zarif said.
“We are too engaged with our internal issues and have forgotten the fact that we are in the middle of a regional strategic game,” he warned. The unnamed “certain states” are busy trying to shape public opinion in the Arab world and that is why “we are witnessing that the citizens of these Arab countries never stop tweeting against Iran,” Zarif said.
“If necessary, they [the certain states] will even enter talks with Satan himself—not to mention they have for long been devoted to Israel,” Zarif told the reporters.