President: Iran favors dialogue, but without pressure

According to The Iran Project, In remarks at a meeting with the elites on Thursday evening, President Pezeshkian reiterated that Iran favors dialogue and negotiations, but it will never cave in to force and pressure.

Iran is ready to hold talks, but not at any price, he emphasized.

The president said it is illogical to approve of negotiations under pressures.

President Pezeshkian also lashed out at his US counterpart for setting preconditions for talks with Iran, insisting on disarmament of Iran, and assigning the Zionist regime to harm the Islamic Republic. He stressed that such US policy in neither logical nor acceptable.

In remarks on February 7, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei referred to discussions and debates about negotiations in newspapers and on the internet, as well as the remarks of certain individuals in this regard, saying, “The focus of these discussions is negotiations with the United States, and they speak of negotiations as a good thing, as though anyone is opposed to negotiation itself being good.”

The Leader highlighted the Foreign Ministry’s extensive diplomatic efforts in negotiating and signing agreements with all countries worldwide, stating, “The only exception in this regard is the US. Of course, we do not count the Zionist regime as an exception because this regime is basically not a government at all but rather a criminal and land-usurping gang.”

Explaining why the US is an exception in negotiations, Ayatollah Khamenei said, “Some pretend that if we sit at the negotiating table, it would solve certain problems, but the reality that we must correctly understood is that negotiations with the US does not have any effect on solving the country’s problems.”

The Leader also cited the negative experience of the 2010s -about two years of negotiations with the US and several other countries, which led to the Nuclear Agreement- as proof of the futility of negotiating with the US. “Our government at the time sat with them, went back and forth and engaged in negotiations, laughed, shook hands, acted friendly [towards them], and did everything, and an agreement was formed in which the Iranian side, with great generosity, granted many concessions to the other side. However, the Americans did not honor that very agreement,” he added.

Reporter : Editorial of The Iran Project