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Iranian President-elect Masoud Pezeshkian speaks during a visit to the shrine of the Islamic Republic's founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Tehran on July 6, 2024. Photo: ATTA KENARE / AFP
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iran’s president-elect Masoud Pezeshkian said on Saturday that he looks forward to engaging in “constructive dialogue” with European countries and stated that Tehran will not respond to pressure from the United States.
Pezeshkian, 69, emerged victorious from the run-off presidential election earlier this month with over 53 percent of the votes, besting his ultraconservative rival Saeed Jalili. The election went to a run-off after none of the candidates gained an absolute majority in the first round. He replaced late president Ebrahim Raisi who died in a helicopter crash in May.
In an article titled “My message to the new world” published in English in the Tehran Times newspaper, Pezeshkian said that following the US withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and global powers, also known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the European countries made commitments to Iran to “salvage the agreement and mitigate the impact” of the withdrawal.
“European countries have reneged on all these commitments,” Pezeshkian wrote.
“Despite these missteps, I look forward to engaging in constructive dialogue with European countries to set our relations on the right path, based on principles of mutual respect and equal footing,” he added.
Under the JCPOA, Iran agreed to curb its nuclear enrichment program in exchange for much-needed relief from crippling sanctions.
But the deal began unraveling in 2018, when Washington, under former president Donald Trump’s administration, unilaterally withdrew from the accord and re-imposed biting sanctions on the Islamic republic, which in turn began stepping up its nuclear enrichment efforts.
Tehran, however, has repeatedly denied that it seeks to develop an atomic bomb, saying that such a move goes against the Islamic Republic’s doctrine.
Efforts to revive the deal have stalled, with the current US administration under President Joe Biden labeling the deal as “dead.”
The Iranian president-elect said that Iran will not respond to pressure from the United States, stating that Tehran’s nuclear program is peaceful and does not include nuclear weapons.
“I wish to emphasize that Iran’s defense doctrine does not include nuclear weapons,” Pezeshkian stressed.
During an interview with Rudaw on Thursday, US National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said that even under the newly elected president, Washington does not expect Iran to change its behavior regarding the JCPOA, and also does not see a path for the return to diplomatic discussions regarding the deal.
“There’s little expectation by the United States that Iranian behavior is really going to change [under Pezeshkian] that much because we both know, there's one person that makes all the big decisions there,” Kirby said, referring to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
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