Accusing President Biden of continuing “the thick file of the Trump sanctions against Iran,’’ the new, hard-line Iranian foreign minister said on Friday that in return for agreeing to limits on its nuclear program, his country would demand far more sanctions relief than it received under the 2015 nuclear deal.In two lengthy interviews with journalists during the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, his first as Iran’s top diplomat, Hossain Amirabdollahian said that Iran would return “very soon” to negotiations in Vienna. But Tehran, he said, had received “contradictory messages” from Washington about restoring the agreement jettisoned by Donald J. Trump more than three years ago.The foreign minister represents a new government that is more closely tied to the military and openly antagonistic to the West than its predecessor, and his repeated insistence on gaining more benefits in return for returning to the deal points to a looming impasse with the United States.American officials have said that if Iran wants to see other sanctions lifted, it must be prepared for what Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken has described as a “longer and stronger” accord than the original, which runs through 2030 — one that would significantly extend the time period when Iran would not be permitted to hold more than a token amount of nuclear fuel.“We will not have a so-called ‘longer and stronger’ deal,’’ Mr. Amirabdollahian told The New York Times in an interview on Thursday night at his hotel opposite the United Nations headquarters. The 2015 accord “has a lot of harsh critics in Iran,” he said, “but we accepted it.’’American officials said they were not surprised by Mr. Amirabdollahian’s position. While they did not meet the new foreign minister — Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has banned direct contact — they said he had made similar statements to European leaders over the past five days.U.S. officials have been expecting that the hard-liners in Iran’s new government would try to raise the price for returning to the accord that Mr. Trump pulled out of in 2018. To gain leverage, over the past two years Iran has resumed its production of uranium and now has a stockpile of fuel far in excess of the limits of the 2015 accord. Earlier this week, Britain’s foreign office declared that “Iran has never been this close to having the ability to develop nuclear weapons.”
#styln-signup {
max-width: calc(100% - 40px);
width: 600px;
margin: 20px auto;
border-bottom: 1px solid #e2e2e2;
min-height: 50px;
}
#styln-signup.web {
display: none;
}
#styln-signup + .live-blog-post::before {
border-top: unset !important;
}
[data-feedpub-type="LIVE_BLOG"] #styln-signup,
[data-feedpub-type="FACT_CHECK"] #styln-signup {
border-bottom: none;>
window.onload = function () {
var target = document.querySelector('#styln-signup');
var tracking = {
testName: 'STYLN_live_transition_alerts',
emailContext: 'storyline_transition_briefing_email_signup',
pushContext: 'storyline_transition_briefing_push_signup',
appDownloadContext: 'storyline_transition_briefing_appdownload_button',
};
var options = {
email: {},
push: {
campaign: 'styln-live-transition-alerts',
cta: 'Keep up with the new Washington — get live updates on politics.',
auto: {
destination: 'styln-live-transition-alerts-auto',
},
},
appDownload: {
cta: 'Stay up to date with live alerts in our app.',
}
};
try {
stylnSignup([{ target, options, tracking }]);
} catch (e) {>Experts estimate that Iran could produce bomb-grade uranium in a month or two, but that it would take 18 months or more to fashion it into a working weapon — plenty of time for the United States, Israel and others to respond. But with each passing month, Iran has expanded its stockpile, and its knowledge, about how to enrich uranium, at scale, to a level that would make it a so-called threshold nuclear power — on the verge of possessing a nuclear weapon, but not quite over that line.Mr. Amirabdollahian’s rejection of any tougher or extended nuclear agreement appeared to signal that Iran intends to preserve the time frame of the 2015 agreement, with restrictions on the amount of nuclear fuel it can produce largely expiring in 2030. There is increasing concern in the West that a duration that seemed long enough in 2015 looks disturbingly short in 2021.The new minister portrayed his view of dealing with the United States as dramatically different from that of his urbane, American-educated predecessor, Mohammad Javad Zarif, saying the previous government had spent far too much energy negotiating lengthy, detailed agreements with the United StatesBy: David E. Sanger, Michael Crowley and Rick Gladstone
Title: Rebuking Biden, Iran’s Chief Diplomat Demands More Sanctions Relief
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-sanctions-biden.html
Published Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2021 23:26:32 +0000
Read More
Did you miss our previous article...
https://badpoliticians.com/us-politics/the-controversial-election-review-in-arizona-is-now-over-the-copycats-are-only-just-beginning
UK PoliticsWorld PoliticsVideosPrivacy PolicyTerms And Conditions
