Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 10
By Temkin Jafarov, Saeed Isayev - Trend:
Iran and the U.S. are no friends, and we do not expect the U.S. to put its hostility aside after the Geneva nuclear deal, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, deputy of foreign minister for legal and international affairs, Abbas Araqchi said, Iran's Mehr news agency reported on Feb. 10.
"The Geneva deal is just about solving one vexed question of many," Araqchi said. "Iran has a lot of differences with the U.S., about Palestine, Syria, Middle East, the human rights and so on."
Iran and the P5+1 reached a nuclear agreement on Nov. 24. Iran has agreed to curb some of its nuclear activities for six months in return for sanctions relief. Both Iran and the P5+1 group have agreed to implement the agreement starting from Jan. 20.
Under the agreement, six major powers agreed to give Iran access to $4.2 billion in revenues blocked overseas if it carries out the deal, which offers sanctions relief in exchange for steps to curb the Iranian nuclear program.
Araqchi said Iran and the U.S. haven't entered the phase of normalization of relations, as the enmity is still there between the countries.
"Iran's nuclear rights must be kept. We do not seek to have nuclear weapons, this is beyond Iran's strategy," Araqchi said.
"The U.S. has to understand that it is a member of P5+1 group, which means it cannot define subjects of negotiations for Iran on its own," he said.
Araqchi went on to say that new sanctions on Iran doesn't correspond well to good will of new round of nuclear talks.
"If the sanctions are imposed, our reply to that would be continuing uranium enrichment," Araqchi said, adding that when some sanctions were lifted, Iran responded accordingly, by halting the 20-percent uranium enrichment.
Further commenting on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC), U.S. negotiator Wendy Sherman's statement on Iran's ballistic missiles, Araqchi said that the issues of Iran's military defense are not included in the Iran-P5+1 talks.
Araqchi added that the issues of defense for Iran are considered "red lines".
Last week Sherman said that "The Joint plan of action does address the fact that Iran's ballistic missiles could be used as a delivery mechanism for nuclear weapons, must be addressed as part of the comprehensive solution."
Sherman conceded that the U.S. failed to "shut down" Iran's ongoing development of ballistic missiles, which have long range capabilities and are the preferred weapon for delivering a nuclear payload.
"It is true that in these first six months we have not shut down all of their production of any ballistic missiles that could have anything to do with the delivery of a nuclear weapon. But that indeed is going to be a part of something that is going to be addressed as part of the comprehensive agreement."
The U.S. and its Western allies suspect Iran of developing a nuclear weapon - something that Iran denies. The Islamic Republic has on numerous occasions stated that it does not seek to develop nuclear weapons, using nuclear energy for medical researches instead.