FM Zarif:

Iran Waiting for Some Sense of Realism from US Side

TEHRAN (defapress) – Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif did not rule out the possibility of talks with the US, saying that Tehran is waiting to see some sense of realism and reliability from Washington.

News ID: 72802

Date: 02 October 2018 - 11:03

“We live in a world of possibilities, so nothing is impossible, but we need to see,” Zarif said in a recent interview with the New Yorker, which was published on Monday.

“That (the JCPOA) is a hundred and fifty pages long. It's not a two-page document,” he said, referring to US President Donald Trump’s agreement with North Korea in June.

“I’m not ruling out the prospect of talks provided the necessary conditions for talks, and that is reliability,” Zarif said.

“Reliability is different from trust. Reliability is that when you sign something you are bound by it. Pacta sunt servanda is the old idiom, the basis of international relations.” (It translates, from Latin, as “treaties shall be complied with.”) “Otherwise everything will fall apart,” the Iranian minister said.

“We are waiting for some sense of realism.”

Trump announced in May that Washington was pulling out of the nuclear agreement which lifted nuclear-related sanctions against Tehran in exchange for restrictions on Tehran's nuclear program. The deal had been signed between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China -- plus Germany in 2015.

The US administration reintroduced the previous sanctions while imposing new ones on the Islamic Republic. It also introduced punitive measures — known as secondary sanctions — against third countries doing business with Iran.

A first round of American sanctions took effect in August, targeting Iran's access to the US dollar, metals trading, coal, industrial software, and auto sector. A second round, forthcoming on November 4, will be targeting Iran’s oil sales and its Central Bank.

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