Envoy: Iran not to start conflict, but stands up to US

London– Iran Envoy to the UK said Iran will not start any conflict with US but the Iranians will stand up to any US aggression.

‘We are not advocating to start the problem and a conflict but I assure you that our people are ready to stand against the United States and pay for the resistance,’ Hamid Baeidinejad said in an interview with British media ‘BBC Radio’, IRNA reported.

Elaborating on the reason why Iran has recently put a 60-day ultimatum for the European partners regarding their implementation of the nuclear-related commitments, he said: ‘Iran has been very faithfully implementing its obligations under the nuclear deal and the only expectation that we had in fact the other parties would also implement their commitments.’

He added: ‘unfortunately this has been damaging the credibility of the nuclear deal and there are after Iran mentioned that we want to rectify the shortcomings of the situation by suspending particular two measures under the nuclear deal.’

‘Iran has been always trying to see how we can contribute to peace and stability in the region,’ Baeidinejad said referring to US provocative acts against Iran such as blacklisting the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).

‘I have told you very honestly that in fact we have taken our steps so cautiously that now we have all the Iranian nation behind the position of the government,’ he reiterated.

He said: ‘We gave sufficient ample time to our European partners to rectify the problems that we are facing because we were not receiving the necessary advantages which defined in the nuclear deal in terms of economy and trade relationship so we gave one year to our partners to resolve the issue which they have not unfortunately been able to resolve by now.’

‘We believe that if we would not act properly, the JCPOA which is the Iran nuclear deal would be in total collapse,’ Baeidinejad said adding: ‘We feel that we should act now if the United States wants to provoke further unnecessarily, we have our determination to face the United States.’

In response to a question whether Iran tends to resume enrichment after two-month ultimatum, he said: ‘Yes, we have taken steps that if this two months period would not be able to sufficiently resolve the issue we would start our next steps but I assure you that these steps are within the boundary of the JCPOA, the nuclear deal.’

Referring to Iran’s aim to encourage other parties to comply with their commitments under the nuclear deal, he said: ‘We are not deciding at this moment to withdraw from the deal and of course that could be among the options that we would be studying but at this moment we have decided to use the parameters within the JCPOA.’

Elsewhere in his remarks, Iran ambassador pointed to Iranian government’s plan to tackle with economic problems, saying: ‘The situation is difficult as you characterized but I think we can do a lot more because we a great economy we have great resources in our country maybe we will not be able to invest properly in other branches but this is the time that as we always say we can turn the challenges into opportunity.’

‘We think that it is the time as we have started already we can reduce our reliance on the oil exports we can in fact see what we can do in other areas and we can change oil into other products which we can export with higher value in the market,’ Baeidinejad reiterated.

He went on to say: ‘According to the latest information, now only thirty percent of our budget is relying on oil, so that’s a great achievement because we are drastically determined in the country that now that we are facing these difficulties to use this situation to rely less on the export of oil.’

‘We are now exporting other commodities like petrochemicals and in fact many other commodities are explored within this area so I can tell you that there is a silent revolution in the economy of Iran.’

‘While we are facing with tremendous pressures from outside we have decided in fact to really reduce our reliance on the outside elements and see what we can do make our economy more resilient and less dependent on the revenues from outside,’ he emphasized.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday that Iran will give a 60-day moratorium to the states parties to Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to remedy their breaches and restore Iran’s interests enshrined by the international deal.

Iranian Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) in a statement announced that Iran has stopped some of its commitments under the JCPOA as of May 8, 2019.

Over the past year and after the US illegal withdrawal from Iran nuclear deal and its breach of the UN Security Council Resolution 2231, the Islamic Republic of Iran has shown most of its self-restraint and has given considerable opportunity on requests made by other parties to JCPOA, the statement reads.

May 8 marks the first anniversary of the US unilateral withdrawal from the Iran Deal formally known as the JCPOA endorsed by United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231.

M.Wassouf