Iran Foreign Minister: If U.S. Wants New Nuclear Concessions, We Do Too<br />He described President Trump’s speech to the United Nations on Tuesday, in which Mr. Trump called the nuclear accord a one-sided embarrassment to the United States<br />that he may abandon, as "absurd." What the administration really wanted, Mr. Zarif said, was to keep the Iranian concessions while trying to extract more from Iran — but with no new concessions from the United States or other parties.<br />And the Iranian minister, who was harshly criticized in Iran for surrendering too much in the negotiation, said<br />that if the United States walked away from the accord, as Mr. Trump threatened, "Who would come and listen to you anymore?" With such a threat, he said, "The United States is sending the wrong signal." Iranian officials seem to be betting that Mr. Trump, for all his criticism of the accord, will not blow it up.<br />Mr. Zarif, who was educated in the United States, spoke with reporters, columnists and editorial writers for The New York Times, a day after he conferred privately with counterparts from the six countries<br />that negotiated the deal with Iran — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States — on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meetings in New York.<br />21, 2017<br />Iran’s foreign minister rejected on Thursday any new negotiation with the United States over extending the length or conditions of the 2015 nuclear accord, saying<br />that Iran would talk about changing the accord only if every concession it made — including giving up nuclear fuel — were reconsidered.<br />Nonetheless, both Mr. Trump and Mr. Tillerson contend<br />that Iran has violated the "spirit" of the nuclear accord by continuing to sponsor groups that the United States regards as terrorist organizations, supporting President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and pursuing cyber attacks against Iran’s Sunni Arab neighbors and the United States.<br />In an interview, the foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said<br />that would mean Iran would retake possession of the stockpile of nuclear fuel it shipped to Russia when the accord took effect.
