Oil Deal with Europe Close Despite Trump Threats: Zarif

TEHRAN – Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Tehran was closing in on an agreement to sell oil to European nations despite American threats of sanctions against any country that does business with Iran, according to Tasnim News Agency.

“This is for us to sell our oil and get the proceeds,” Zarif told reporters in New York, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

He said that under the United Nations resolutions passed once the 2015 agreement was reached, countries have the legal right to trade with Iran.

 Two weeks ago, Brian Hook, the US State Department envoy for Iran, said the United States was seeking “the new deal that we hope to be able to sign with Iran, and it will not be a personal agreement between two governments like the last one; we seek a treaty.”

The minister on Saturday showed no interest in such a deal.

He laughed when asked whether the United States could bring down the current Iranian government with mounting financial pressure.

Nor did Zarif expect the United States to attack key Iranian facilities.

“If the US believed it would have succeeded in such an attack, it would have done so already,” he said.

H.M