Iranian foreign minister: Biden's push for more concessions 'will go nowhere'

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last updated 18 March 2021

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told Politico that Tehran is prepared to wait for the United States to come back around to the original framework of the 2015 nuclear plan, but, until then, the two sides will remain where they are.

In the lengthy interview, Zarif explained the Iranian government's current stance, saying that the Biden administration wants a "new agreement, they want a wider agreement, they want something else" and is attempting to "use pressure and coercion in order to extract new concessions from Iran," but "we have an agreement; we talked about this agreement with the same people who are in the State Department today. So they know exactly what it takes to go to back to compliance [with the 2015 pact], unless they're not serious about what they're saying."

Trying to restart negotiations with a more expansive endgame in mind "will go nowhere" for the U.S., Zarif said, because the two sides had previously spent 12 years trying to come to terms on the same issues before ultimately winding up with the nuclear deal. "Now they want to reopen those discussions, which means another two years of unnecessary discussion," he continued. "So there's nothing to talk about." Read the full interview at Politico.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.

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