Iran and US need to maintain a communication link even during critical situations in order to prevent the escalation of crisis, said Chairman of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of the Iranian Parliament on Tuesday. Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh made the remark in an interview with Islamic Consultative Assembly News Agency (ICANA), following US President Donald Trump’s […]
Iran and US need to maintain a communication link even during critical situations in order to prevent the escalation of crisis, said Chairman of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of the Iranian Parliament on Tuesday.
Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh made the remark in an interview with Islamic Consultative Assembly News Agency (ICANA), following US President Donald Trump’s announcement on Monday that he would be willing to meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani “anytime they want to,” without setting any preconditions.
“Americans have always violated their terms of deal with Iran, but even at the peak of such violations, that is their withdrawal from the nuclear agreement, they are still talking about negotiations,” said the Iranian MP in an interview on Tuesday.
Stressing that third-party countries are forming and exploiting the enmity between Iran and the US, he said “Tehran and Washington are two major powers in the region and the world, therefore the smallest significant issue here is for the two countries to maintain a hotline for communication that would prevent the escalation of crisis between them.”
He maintained that the conflicts between Iran and US at present are escalating on a fabricated premise, because many issues raised by the US are based on “false information”.
Asked whether Iran should use a return to the nuclear agreement as a precondition for talks with the US, he said that Iran’s belief is that the nuclear deal is a separate issue; “we consider this agreement as a separate international regime in legal and international terms, and the Europeans are even more resolute than us to preserve it.”
“As long as Americans talk about negotiations with Iran from a position of force and bullying, no negotiations would ever take place, and that is because neither side has a strategy for either war or talks,” he added.
