TEHRAN – President Hassan Rouhani says if the United States repents, abandons its “glass breaking” behavior and returns to its nuclear agreement commitments, Iran will also return to compliance with the deal.
“The administration that will come to power in the U.S. in the near future, that is Mr. [Joe] Biden’s administration, which will come to power in the next two weeks, if it says the U.S. has stopped breaking glass, repents and wants to follow the law and fulfills its obligations, and if it asks us, we will say if you fulfill your obligations we will fulfill all our obligations as well,” Rouhani said at a Wednesday cabinet session.
“And if you won’t fulfill your commitments, we won’t bow to you,” he said, adding, “If you fulfill your obligations, we won’t owe you anything. Rather, you had done something illegal, and then you regretted your illegal work and gave up and realized that you were wrong.”
Iran and six world powers, including the U.S., Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany, together with the European Union reached the nuclear deal, officially called the JCPOA, in 2015, under which Iran agreed to put certain restrictions on its nuclear program in exchange for termination of sanctions.
However, despite Iran’s strict compliance with the deal, U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the deal, which was signed under his predecessor Barack Obama, and imposed harsh economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic to force it to negotiate a new deal.
With Joe Biden’s victory, however, hopes have been raised over the survival of the nuclear deal. Biden has promised to return the United States into the JCPOA if Iran returns to full compliance with the deal.
President Rouhani maintained that no one in the world should think that the Iranian nation would surrender in the face of sanctions.
“We will continue our path powerfully,” he said. “Of course, any time that the other side surrenders to the rule of law, we will welcome it.”
In remarks late last month, the president compared the outgoing U.S. president to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, saying Trump will face the same fate.
“We’ve had two lunatics in [our] history, one was Saddam who imposed a military war on us and the other lunatic is Trump who imposed the economic war on us,” Rouhani said.
He said Iran emerged victorious in the military war and waited for the Iraqi lunatic to be hanged. “Trump’s destiny will be no better than Saddam’s,” he emphasized.
“We saw how the Iranian people broke them with their resistance against those who wanted to break us,” the president added.
Rouhani also said last month that his administration is “not excited” about Biden’s victory, but it’s happy about Trump’s defeat.
“Some say you are excited about Biden’s coming [into power]. No, we’re no excited, but we’re very happy about Trump’s leaving,” he said, describing Trump as a person who even blocked the provision of vaccines to patients because he did not adhere to any moral and humane principles.
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