Zarif to US: Threats Won’t Work with Iran, Try Respect

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says Iran will never give in to external pressure, advising US officials to stop threatening the Iranian nation and learn how to respect it instead, according to Press TV.

Speaking in Tehran on Monday, Zarif said Washington’s attempt to pressure Tehran into negotiations is a direct result of the many defeats that it has conceded to Iran both in the region and on the international scene.

“We will never succumb to international pressure, and together with the people of the world, we will force them to only treat Iran with respect and never threaten an Iranian,” Zarif said at an event on the occasion of the national industry and mine day.

 He said the US has tried every possible means to weaken Iran and now turned into economic pressure as the last resort.

 “The US would do anything to find allies against Iran,” Zarif said, referring to America’s four attempts last year to make a case against Iran in the United Nations Security Council, but to no avail.

 “That is why they resorted to economy as the last trick in their disposal,” he argued.

Tensions have been running high between the two countries since Trump’s decision in May last year to abandon the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions on Tehran as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign.

    “The Americans arrived at the conclusion that that, with the JCPOA, the Islamic Republic had broken free from the shackles that tied its hands and was increasing its regional power and presence” while Washington became “weaker by the day,” the top Iranian diplomat said.

They “tried to use the dollar’s medium-term domination in global economy to cause trouble for us but instead put themselves in trouble in the long run,” he added.

Trump has called for talks with Iran with “no preconditions,” but Tehran has rejected the offer as long as Washington does not return to the JCPOA and maintains its political and economic pressure on the country.

Zarif said Monday the US was looking to “break the resistance and the livelihood” of the Iranian nation “who excellently resisted [US pressure] over the past four decades and are the key principle of Iran’s grandeur.”

 Iran’s enriched uranium stocks exceed 300kg

In the same context, Zarif says Iran has increased the level of its low-enriched uranium production to over 300 kilograms as had been already announced by the country in line with Articles 26 and 36 of a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

 “According to my information, Iran has surpassed the 300kg limit [in producing low-enriched uranium] and we had already announced [that we were planning to do] this,” Iran’s top diplomat said, answering a question by Iran’s ISNA news agency on the sidelines of a ceremony in the central Iranian city of Natanz.

He added, “According to what has been announced, we have said very clearly what we are doing and consider this as part of our rights as per the JCPOA.”

Iran’s foreign minister added that the country had already announced that if steps taken by Europeans to compensate any possible losses to Iran following unilateral withdrawal of the US from the JCPOA were not adequate, it would take steps to reduce its commitments in return.

 “We already announced that measures taken by Europeans have not been sufficient, and as the Islamic Republic had announced, we will implement the second stage of reducing our commitments. The first stage is going on both with regard to [the enriched] uranium stocks and heavy water stocks, and the next stage has been announced and will be implemented,” Tasnim news agency quoted Zarif as saying.

H.M