Iran’s President, FM engage in intensive diplomacy at UNGA to avert sanctions

The Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi are in New York to take part at the 80th General Assembly of the United Nations with a crucial working agenda to prevent re-imposition of the UN nuclear sanctions.

President Pezeshkian delivered his speech on Wednesday at the annual event in which he stressed that Tehran “has never sought and will never seek” to build a nuclear bomb.

"I hereby declare once more before this assembly that Iran has never sought and will never seek to build a nuclear bomb. We do not seek nuclear weapons,” he said days before the September 28 deadline for likely return of the pre-2015 nuclear sanctions.

The chief executive also slammed the European powers France, Germany, and the U.K. which are parties to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal signed in Vienna for referring their dispute with Tehran to the UN Security Council on August 28 calling for the snapback of sanctions.

Following the speech, Pezeshkian met his French counterpart Emanuel Macron for talks which were expected to focus on the nuclear standoff with the European powers and Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA in the wake of attacks on its nuclear facilities.

After Pezeshkian's departure for New York on Tuesday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei said in a televised speech that Tehran will continue nuclear enrichment for peaceful purposes and will “not surrender to pressures”.

In remarks broadcast after the UN speech of US President Donald Trump, he rejected nuclear negotiations with Washington as a “dead-end” which is not in Tehran’s interests stressing that Iran is not and will not pursue a nuclear bomb.

Foreign Minister Araghchi has been in last-minute diplomatic contacts meeting the IAEA Director General Rafeal Grossi twice in the last two days and held a joint meeting with the E3 foreign ministers and the EU foreign policy chief on the sidelines of the assembly.

“The joint meeting reviewed the progress of the talks held over the past month to find diplomatic solutions to the Iranian nuclear issue and prevent an escalation of tensions ... it was decided to continue consultations with all parties involved,” the Foreign Ministry said in press release.

In Tehran, Secretary of Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani in a meeting with members of the Chamber of Commerce said the snapback mechanism was activated only after Iran rejected the new condition of the European powers to limit the range of its ballistic missiles to 500 kilometres. 

According to the top security official, the European troika has laid down the three conditions of resumption of nuclear talks with the U.S., return of the IAEA inspectors, and access to the stockpiled enriched uranium in return for a six-month suspension of the snapback mechanism.

In the meantime, Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmail Baghaei strongly criticized the U.S. restrictions on the Iranian delegation in New York as a new level of hostility to disrupt Iran’s diplomatic activities.

“Applying such cheap restrictions on our diplomats' movements and even on their daily grocery shopping is not only a blatant violation of the US obligations under the Headquarters Agreement but also a new low in terms of showcasing the extent of animosity of US administration toward Iranians,” he said in a statement.

President Donald Trump in his speech on day 1 at the UN General Assembly said that Iran should not be allowed to have nuclear weapons despite Iran insisting that its nuclear programme was strictly for civilian use.

Iran’s Parliament is set to discuss withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty on Sunday coinciding the date the looming pre-2015 sanctions could be re-instated.

Last June, the lawmakers suspended Tehran’s cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog after Israel and US bombed Iran’s major nuclear facilities during the 12-day war in June following a non-compliance resolution which Iran says served as a pretext for attacking its sites.

Copied