His claim was faced with a response from Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Abbas Mousavi in his twitter account. Mousavi refuted the claim and tweeted, “Mr Zarif’s answer to the NBC reporter was very accurate, well-thought and pertinent and according to the experts “reduction ad absurdum”. He threw the ball into the United States’ court, and challenged Washington’s arms deals with regional countries.” Mousavi added, “Tehran’s and Zarif’s stance vis-à-vis the Iranian missile program is clear.”

IRAN NEWS POLITICAL DESK

Spokesman for the Iranian mission at the United Nations, wrote on his official Twitter page, “Iran’s missiles and its missile program are absolutely and under no condition negotiable with anyone or any country, period.” This statement categorically rejected the Associated Press’s characterization of Foreign Minister (Mohammad Javad) Zarif’s comments to NBC News that “If the U.S. wants to talk about missiles, it should stop selling weapons, including missiles, to regional states” as meaning that Iran is willing to negotiate on its defensive missile program at some point.”

He went on to say, “Surely AP reporters are familiar enough with conversational English to know and understand and are able to contextualize comments on the hypothetical, as well as parrying with words to make a point. Drawing a false conclusion in pursuit of headlines, when what was said in the context was obvious, only leads to a diminution of the standing of the press with the public.”

When Foreign Minister Zarif in his interview with British broadcasting BBC was asked if this would include discussions about Iran’s missiles – something absent from the original 2015 agreement – Iran’s foreign minister said if the U.S. wanted to discuss the program, he replied, “Let’s all start with we already agreed, let us see what we can do and then if you want to discuss ballistic missiles, then we need to discuss the amount of weapons sold to our region. Last year Iran spent $16b all together on its military, we have an 82 million population …  The United Arab Emirates with a million population spent $22b. Saudi Arabia with less than half of our population spent $67b, most of them are American. These are American weaponry that is going into our region, making our region ready to explode. So if they want to talk about our missiles, they need first to stop selling all these weapons including missiles to our region.”

Zarif completed his interview with BBC with posting a tweet on his page and wrote: “For 8 years, [former Iraqi President] Saddam showered our cities with missiles and bombs provided by East and West. Meanwhile, no one sold Iran any means of defense. We had no choice but building our own. Now they complain. Instead of skirting the issue, U.S. must end arms sales to Saddam’s reincarnations.”

That in this condition foreign minister has replied to the questions of the American reporters logically and reasonably indicates that he has emphasized the offence of the U.S. for pulling out of the JCPOA and arming the Persian Gulf states but actually it is beyond foreign minister’s authority to talk about the country’s missile programs. Of course Mr. Zarif is well aware of it that Europe and the U.S.  have once and again tried to open the chapter of negotiations but they have failed.

By: Hamid Reza Naghashian