BEIRUT, Jan 8: Iran does not want war with Israel or the United States, but is ready to fight back if attacked again, the country’s foreign minister said on Thursday.
Speaking upon arrival in Beirut, Abbas Araghchi told reporters that Iran is also ready for negotiations with the US over its nuclear programme as long as the talks are based on mutual respect rather than “dictation” by Washington.
Araghchi’s comments came as many fear that close US ally Israel will target Iran again as it did during the 12-day war it launched against Tehran in June. Israel killed a slew of top military officials and nuclear scientists, and the US bombed Iranian nuclear enrichment sites.
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“America and Israel have tested their attack on Iran, and this attack and strategy faced extreme failure,” the Iranian official said in Beirut at the start of a two-day visit to Lebanon. “If they repeat it, they will face the same results.”
“We are ready for any choice. We don’t desire a war, but we are ready for it,” Araghchi said.
In February, US President Donald Trump reimposed a “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran in an effort to block its development of nuclear weapons. The campaign included US-led strikes on three critical Iranian enrichment facilities in June.
Araghchi said Tehran is ready for “negotiations, but I say that the negotiations should be based on mutual respect and mutual interests.”
“We believe that once the Americans reach the outcome that constructive and positive negotiations rather than ordering dictation are the framework, then at that time the results of these negotiations become fruitful,” he said.
Iran had been enriching uranium up to 60 per cent purity — a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels — after Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers in 2018. Tehran has maintained its atomic programme is peaceful, though the West and the IAEA, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, say Iran had an organised nuclear weapons programme until 2003.
In late December, Trump warned Iran that the US could carry out further military strikes if the country attempts to reconstitute its nuclear programmeme, as he held talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Florida. (AP)
