Ghasemi dismisses agreement with EU on curbing Iran regional influence
TEHRAN– FM Spokesman Ghasemi said Mon. the recent talks between Iran and E4 in Rome aimed at reaching a political solution to Yemeni crisis and that the two sides have made no new agreement on curbing Iran’s regional influence.
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Ghasemi made the remarks in his weekly press conference on Monday in response to a question about Trump’s attempts to curb Iran’s regional influence, Mehr News reported.
“Our talks focused on ways to send humanitarian aid to Yemeni people,” Ghasemi said in reference to a recent Iran-E4 meeting held in Rome.
“We are making efforts to alleviate the suffering of the Yemeni people and are hoping that the countries responsible for the dire situation in Yemen would allow humanitarian aid to reach these downtrodden people during the holy month of Ramadan.”
The meeting in Rome, the second of its kind after the one held in Munich, gathered top diplomats from Iran, Britain, France, Germany and Italy around a table to discuss the developments in Yemen. The EU statement issued at the end of the meeting deemed the political talks with Iran ‘constructive’ and announced the next round of the talks to be held in Brussels in the near future.
Asked to comment about the May 12 deadline and what Trump’s final decision would be regarding the fate of the JCPOA and sanctions waivers, Ghasemi said “one cannot tell at the moment. The JCPOA has certain features that make it difficult to withdraw from it.”
He stressed that if Trump decided to pull out of the deal, Iran’s response would be ‘painful’ for the US and would cause the American side much regret.
“Washington will pay a heavy price for exiting the nuclear agreement,” he said. “It will make the world all the more distrustful of the US.”
“Iran will not be the first country to violate the JCPOA, and once the agreement ceases to be profitable to the Iranian nation, we will take the necessary decisions,” he added.
M.Wassouf