[🇮🇷] Iran & the USA Relationship

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[🇮🇷] Iran & the USA Relationship
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Iranian president warns Trump against risking ‘war’
Agence France-Presse . Washington 15 January, 2025, 22:02

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Masoud Pezeshkian | AFP file photo

Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran was not seeking ‘nuclear weaponry’ and warned US president-elect Donald Trump against risking ‘war’ with the Islamic republic, according to a US televised interview broadcast on Tuesday.

‘I do hope that Trump will conduce to peace in the region and the world not, conversely, contribute to bloodshed or war,’ Pezeshkian said in an interview with NBC News, less than a week before Trump returns to the White House.

Washington has not maintained formal diplomatic relations with Tehran for nearly 45 years, and Trump threatened during his recent presidential campaign that US ally Israel could strike Iranian nuclear facilities.

‘We will react to any action. We do not fear war, but we do not seek it,’ Pezeshkian said about the prospect of US-endorsed Israeli military strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites.

Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi reported Tuesday that European powers were serious about resuming nuclear program negotiations.

In 2015, Iran and world powers — including France, Britain and Germany — reached an agreement that eased international sanctions on Tehran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme.

But the United States, during Trump’s first term in office, unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 and reimposed biting economic sanctions.

Tehran adhered to the deal until Washington’s withdrawal, but then began rolling back on its commitments.

‘We do not seek to create nuclear weaponry or armament,’ Pezeshkian said. ‘However, they accuse us of seeking the manufacturing of a bomb.’

When asked by NBC News host Lester Holt about the possibility of having talks with Trump once he returns to power, the Iranian leader was sceptical.

‘The problem we have is not in dialogue. It’s in the commitments that arise from talks and dialogue that we’ll have to commit to,’ Pezeshkian said, adding: ‘It was the other party did not live up to its promises and obligations.’​
 

US should win back Tehran’s trust for N-talks: Iran
Agence France-Presse . Tehran 28 January, 2025, 22:21

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Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi has said that the new US administration should work to win back Tehran’s trust if it wants a new round of nuclear negotiations.

‘The situation is different and much more difficult than the previous time, lots of things should be done by the other side to buy our confidence,’ Araghchi said in a video of an interview with Sky News posted to his official Telegram channel Tuesday.

During his first term, Trump pursued a policy of ‘maximum pressure’ towards Iran, withdrawing from a landmark 2015 deal that imposed curbs on Iran’s nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief.

Following the withdrawal, the United States reimposed biting sanctions on Tehran, prompting the Islamic republic to begin rolling back its commitments, including by increasing its level of uranium enrichment.

‘There should be enough confidence for Iran to once again engage in negotiations, and I think we are still far from that,’ Araghchi said in the interview.

‘We haven’t heard anything but the nice words (from the new US administration) and this is obviously not enough.’

On Thursday, Trump said he wished to avoid military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, hoping instead for an agreement.

‘Any attack against our nuclear facilities would be faced with an immediate and decisive response,’ Araghchi said, adding such a move would be ‘crazy’, and would ‘turn the region into a very bad disaster’.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in all matters of state, also warned on Tuesday that ‘behind the smiles of diplomacy, there are enmities, grudges, and evil intentions’.

‘We should open our eyes and be careful who we are facing, dealing with, and talking to,’ he added, without referring to the United States.

Iran has repeatedly expressed willingness to revive the nuclear deal, and president Masoud Pezeshkian, who took office in July, has called for an end to his country’s isolation.

However, Iranian deputy foreign minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi said Monday that there had been no exchanges between Iran and the US since Trump returned to the White House.

Meanwhile, Khamenei said Tuesday that Gaza had brought Israel ‘to its knees’, in a reference to the recent ceasefire in the Palestinian territory.

The ceasefire and hostage-release deal between Iran’s arch-enemy Israel and the Tehran-backed militant group Hamas went into effect just over a week ago, aiming to put an end to more than 15 months of war.

‘The small, limited Gaza brought the Zionist regime, armed to the teeth, and fully supported by America, to its knees,’ Khamenei said during a meeting with officials in Tehran.

Also on Tuesday, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Esmaeil Baqaei, criticised US president Donald Trump’s idea to move Palestinians out of Gaza to other locations such as Egypt or Jordan.

‘Political coercion and demographic manipulations will not be able to force the Palestinians to migrate,’ Baqaei said in a post on X, adding that Gaza is the Palestinians’ ‘homeland and they’ve paid (an) extremely high price to remain there’.

The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Militants also took 251 hostages, 87 of whom remain in Gaza, including dozens Israel says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 47,000 people in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.​
 

Khamenei warns against negotiating with US
Agence France-Presse . Tehran 07 February, 2025, 22:31

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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Friday that there should not be negotiations with the United States, days after US president Donald Trump called for a new nuclear deal.

‘You should not negotiate with such a government, it is unwise, it is not intelligent, it is not honourable to negotiate,’ Khamenei said during a meeting with army commanders.

The United States had previously ‘ruined, violated, and tore up’ a 2015 nuclear deal, he said, adding that ‘the same person who is in power now tore up the treaty’.

On Wednesday, Trump suggested striking a ‘verified nuclear peace agreement’ with Iran, adding in his social media post that Tehran ‘cannot have a Nuclear Weapon’.

Trump, who returned to the White House on January 20, reinstated on Tuesday his ‘maximum pressure’ policy towards Iran over allegations the country is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

Iran insists its nuclear programme is solely for peaceful purposes and denies any intention to develop atomic weapons.

Following the policy’s reinstatement, Washington on Thursday announced financial sanctions on entities and individuals accused of shipping hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Iranian crude oil to China.

Tehran on Friday condemned the sanctions as ‘illegal’, saying they were ‘categorically unjustified and contrary to international rules’.

‘We must understand this correctly: they should not pretend that if we sit down at the negotiating table with that government (the US administration), problems will be solved,’ Khamenei said.

‘No problem will be solved by negotiating with America,’ he said, citing previous ‘experience’.

Khamenei also warned of reciprocal measures if the United States threatened or acted against Iran.

‘If they threaten us, we will threaten them. If they carry out this threat, we will carry out our threat. If they attack the security of our nation, we will attack their security without hesitation,’ he said.

During Trump’s first term, which ended in 2021, Washington withdrew from the landmark nuclear deal that had imposed curbs on Iran’s nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief.

Tehran adhered to the 2015 deal — known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — until a year after Washington pulled out, but then began rolling back its commitments. Efforts to revive the deal have since faltered.

Khamenei said Iran was ‘very generous’ during the negotiations that culminated in the deal, but it ‘did not achieve the intended results’.

Iranian political expert Afifeh Abedi said the Khamenei’s remarks highlight ‘a serious concern’ that negotiations ‘will result in the US breaching its commitments’.

‘Iran understands that Trump’s willingness to negotiate is a disingenuous, reactionary move driven by other objectives, rather than a genuine commitment to reaching an agreement,’ she said.

Iran has repeatedly expressed a willingness to revive the nuclear deal, and president Masoud Pezeshkian has called for an end to the country’s isolation.

Foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said recently the new US administration should work to regain Tehran’s trust if it wants a new round of nuclear talks.

Western sanctions, especially since the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal, have taken a toll on millions of Iranians struggling to make ends meet amid high inflation and a plunging currency.

Khamenei acknowledged this on Friday, saying ‘almost most segments of the population have some problems’ but adding they could be solved internally.

The current ‘respected government can reduce the livelihood problems of the people’, he said.

Tehran has said it hopes Trump will adopt a ‘realistic’ approach towards countries in the Middle East including Iran.

However, on Thursday, it joined Arab countries and world leaders in condemning a Trump plan to move Palestinians out of Gaza ‘permanently’.

In the wake of the uproar, the Trump administration appeared to backtrack, with Washington’s top diplomat saying any transfer of Gazans would be temporary.

Without directly mentioning Gaza, Khamenei said Friday the US administration was trying ‘to change the map of the world’.

‘Of course it is only on paper, it has no basis in reality,’ he said.​
 

Trump aiming to bring Iran ‘to its knees’
Says Iran’s president

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Iran's president yesterday accused his US counterpart Donald Trump of seeking to bring the Islamic republic "to its knees" as the country marked the 1979 revolution that toppled the shah.

The revolution removed a pro-US government in Iran, and the subsequent hostage-taking of American diplomats in Tehran ushered in decades of hostility between the United States and Iran.

This year's celebrations carry additional weight following Trump's return to the White House. During his first term, Trump he pursued a policy of "maximum pressure" against the Islamic republic.

In the morning, people gathered in public spaces across Iran, accompanied by pop songs and patriotic ballads, to celebrate the anniversary of the overthrow of shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

In Tehran, they headed to the symbolic Azadi tower, whose name means "freedom" in Persian, and which is in a square formerly named in honour of the shah.

"Trump says, 'we want to talk', and... (then) he signs in a memorandum all the conspiracies to bring our revolution to its knees," Pezeshkian told the crowd, referring to Trump's reinstatement of sanctions against Tehran earlier this month.

"We are not looking for war," he said, while adding that Iran "will never bow to foreigners".

Chanting anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans, crowds formed Monday in the streets of Shiraz and Bandar Abbas in the south, Rasht in the north, Kermanshah and Sanandaj in the west, and the holy city of Mashhad in the east, according to images broadcast on television.

Attendees, many of them families, carried portraits of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the green, red and white flag of Iran, as well as the banners of Tehran-backed groups such as Hezbollah.​
 

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