TEHRAN: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Thursday that his country will not negotiate “under pressure and intimidation”, however, Tehran is ready to resolve doubts about its atomic programme.
“The ball is in the EU/E3 court,” FM Araghchi said, adding that Iran is “NOT ready to negotiate under pressure and intimidation,” Iranian official news agency IRNA quoted its Foreign Minister as saying after talks with International Atomic Energy Agency chief in Tehran.
IAEA chief Rafael Grossi is visiting Iran for important talks on Iran’s nuclear programme ahead of US President-elect Donald Trump’s arrival in office.
Grossi said “results” in nuclear talks with Iran were vital to avoid a new conflict in the region. He said Iranian nuclear installations “should not be attacked”.
The IAEA chief described his meeting with Araghchi as “indispensable” in a post on X.
Started my two-day visit to Iran with an indispensable meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister @araghchi. pic.twitter.com/c8Fg9LqqqD
— Rafael MarianoGrossi (@rafaelmgrossi) November 14, 2024
Araghchi was Iran’s chief negotiator in talks that led to a landmark 2015 nuclear deal with major powers, abandoned three years later by Trump.
Araghchi posted that their meeting was “important & straightforward”.
Important & straightforward talks with DG @rafaelmgrossi this morning.
As a committed member of NPT we continue our full cooperation with the IAEA. Differences can be resolved through cooperation and dialogue. We agreed to proceed with courage and good will.
Iran has never… pic.twitter.com/bwLLzrKzwE
— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) November 14, 2024
He said Iran was “willing to negotiate” based on the “national interest” and “inalienable rights,” but was not “ready to negotiate under pressure and intimidation”.
“We agreed to proceed with courage and good will. Iran has never left the negotiation table on its peaceful nuclear programme,” he said.
Grossi also met the head of Iran’s atomic energy organisation, Mohammad Eslami.
Eslami told a joint news conference that Iran would take “immediate countermeasures” against any sanctions from the IAEA’s board of governors.
“Any interventionist resolution in the nuclear affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran will definitely be met with immediate countermeasures,” Eslami said.
Grossi’s visit is his second to Tehran this year but his first since Trump’s re-election.
During his first term in the White House from 2017 to 2021, Trump adopted a policy called “maximum pressure” which reimposed sweeping US economic sanctions that had been lifted under the 2015 deal.
Iran has blamed the incoming US president for the standoff.
“The one who left the agreement was not Iran, it was America,” government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said on Wednesday.
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“Mr. Trump once tried the path of maximum pressure and saw that this path did not work.”
Grossi has said that while Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon, it does have plenty of enriched uranium that could eventually be used to make one.
Later Thursday, Grossi was due to hold talks with President Masoud Pezeshkian, who won election in July on a platform to improve ties with the West and revive the 2015 deal.
Grossi said he would visit uranium enrichment plants at Fordo and Natanz on Friday to get a “full picture” of Iran’s nuclear programme. – AFP
