Zarif Highlights Trump’s Diplomatic Illiteracy

TEHRAN (defapress)- Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif reminded US President Donald Trump that “serious diplomacy” is different from what the American president is currently doing, adding that good agreements are achieved through time-consuming negotiations.

News ID: 75934

Date: 02 March 2019 - 15:25

"President Trump should've now realized that pageantries, photo-ops & flip-flops don’t make for serious diplomacy," Zarif tweeted on Friday, a day after Trump, a self-proclaimed "dealmaker," cut short his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the Vietnamese capital city of Hanoi as they failed to strike a denuclearization deal.

The top diplomat also once again defended the historic Iran nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), reached between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries in 2015.

“It took 10yrs of posturing plus two years-literally thousands of hours-of negotiations to hammer out every word of the 150 page JCPOA. You'll never get a better deal,” the Iranian diplomatic chief said in his message.

Trump announced on May 8, 2018 that Washington would no longer remain part of the JCPOA and promised to re-impose the highest level of economic sanctions against Iran.

After Trump's declaration, the Iranian government issued a statement, calling the US withdrawal as "unlawful". The statement underlined Iran's prerequisites for continuing the deal with the five world powers. These conditions that were reiterated later by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei mainly included Iran's guaranteed crude sales and transfer of its revenues back home.

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