Vienna, Sept 23: Iran’s supreme leader on Tuesday rejected direct negotiations with the United States over his country’s nuclear programme, likely slamming the door shut on a last-ditch effort to halt the reimposition of United Nations sanctions on Tehran.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s remarks, aired on Iranian state television, likely constrain any possible outreach to the US by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who is in New York for the UN General Assembly.
Separately, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi held meetings with diplomats from France, Germany and the United Kingdom over the reimposition of the sanctions, set to take effect Sunday.
Talks with the US represent “a sheer dead end,” Khamenei said.
“The US has announced result of the talks in advance,” he added. “The result is the closure of nuclear activities and enrichment, This is not a negotiation. It is a diktat, an imposition.”
Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul already described the chance of reaching an agreement with Iran “extremely slim” even before Khamenei’s comments, the German news agency dpa reported.
“Iran has been disregarding its obligations under the Vienna Nuclear Agreement for years,” Wadephul was reported as saying, referring to the nuclear deal that was concluded between Iran and world powers in Vienna in 2015 and aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
“We have drawn the necessary consequences from this and triggered the so-called snapback mechanism, which will reinstate international sanctions against Iran at the end of this week,” he said.
Wadephul added, however, that the three European countries — known as the E3 — will continue to negotiate with Iran even after the sanctions are back.
Amid a flurry of diplomatic engagements, Araghchi on Monday also met with Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in New York.
Earlier this month, the UN nuclear watchdog and Iran signed an agreement mediated by Egypt to pave the way for resuming cooperation, including on ways of relaunching inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities. However, that agreement has yet to fully take hold.
In July, Pezeshkian signed a law adopted by his country’s parliament suspending all cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog. That followed Israel’s 12-day war with Iran in June, during which Israel and the US bombed Iranian nuclear sites.
France, Germany and the UK began the process of reimposing sanctions on Iran at the end of August.
The process — termed a “snapback” by the diplomats who negotiated it into Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers — was designed to be veto-proof at the UN. It started a 30-day clock ticking for the resumption of sanctions unless the West and Iran reach a diplomatic agreement.
European nations have said they would be willing to extend the deadline if Iran resumes direct negotiations with the US over its nuclear programme, allows UN nuclear inspectors access to its nuclear sites, and accounts for the more than 400 kilograms (881 pounds) of highly enriched uranium the UN watchdog says it has.
If no diplomatic deal is found this week, the sanctions will automatically “snapback” on Sunday. That would again freeze Iranian assets abroad, halt arms deals with Tehran and penalise any development of Iran’s ballistic missile programme, among other measures, further squeezing the country’s reeling economy.
Iran has long insisted its programme is peaceful, though Western nations and the IAEA assess that Tehran had an active nuclear weapons programme until 2003. Khamenei again pledged that Iran does not seek atomic bombs.
“We do not have a nuclear bomb and we will not have one, and we do not plan to use nuclear weapon,” he said.
However, he stressed that Israeli and American attacks would not destroy the nuclear knowledge gained by Iran over the decades over the crisis surrounding the programme.
“Science will not be demolished by threats and bombing,” he vowed. (AP)
