ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iran’s foreign minister said Sunday that government is not open to negotiating its missile program, after US Secretary of State John Kerry said that Washington was open to a “new arrangement” with Tehran. Speaking at a news conference in Tehran, Mohammad Javad Zarif said that the Iran's defense programs were clearly excluded from a nuclear agreement signed last month, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). “There would be no JCPOA for defense issues,” Press TV quoted Zarif as saying. Iran test-fired two new ballistic missiles last month, igniting criticism in the US Congress that it violated the terms of the JCPOA. In jabs at Saudi Arabia and Israel, Zarif said that Washington should stop arms sales to Israel and the Saudi regime. “If the US administration is really serious about defense issues, it should decrease the sale of weapons, which are killing innocent Yemeni people every day, and should stop (the sale of) weapons which, as admitted by the Zionist regime, are used to attack civilians,” Zarif said. Zarif’s comments came after Kerry suggested on Thursday that Washington was open to a “new arrangement” with Tehran for peacefully resolving disputes such as the recent ballistic missile tests. Kerry said the US and its partners were telling Iran that they were “prepared to work on a new arrangement to find a peaceful solution to these issues.” Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) test-fired two ballistic missiles on March 9 during military drills. A day before, Iran fired another ballistic missile from silo-based launchers in different locations across the country, according to Press TV.
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