Speaking to Mehr in an interview on Sunday, the former Iranian ambassador to Italy, Abolfazl Zohravand reacted to the recent remarks by the US national security adviser Jake Sullivan about Iran nuclear program and said that "Sullivan's remarks actually showed the need for the United States to negotiate with Iran."
According to Zohravand, "Sullivan emphasized that the US is looking for a strong and long-term agreement with Iran."
"The Americans have to continue to turn the spotlight on the issue of nuclear weapons in order to show Iran as a credible threat and also to make their own audience buy their justification for flexibility to negotiate with Iran," he said, adding "In fact, they [Americans] seek to show that Iran is moving towards nuclear weapons, and they do not want Iran to have nuclear weapons. They pretend to be getting involved in conflict with Iran and in order to prevent that from happening, it is better to negotiate. "
Zohravand also said, "The United States needs to negotiate with Iran because, as Sullivan also stated, its withdrawal from the JCPOA was wrong. Europe has also talked about triggering the snapback mechanism. But as I have said so many times, it is not possible to use the snapback mechanism."
"The snapback mechanism could be triggered when the Americans were in P4+1 and had not withdrawn from the JCPOA; Now the Europeans have practically no role, and the main responsibility of the JCPOA in that regard was with its main participant, namely the United States. The requirement for America's re-existence in the JCPOA was that we [Iran] accept that."
The former envoy further stressed the United States can only trigger the mechanism when it is a participant in the JCPOA.
According to Zohravand, "When Jack Sullivan said that the Americans recognized the Zionist Israeli regime reserves the right to confront Iran, that was also nonsense, because the Zionist regime is nothing and if it does a move against Iran, it will be wiped off the map."
He further noted that the Israeli regime is too weak to pose a credible threat against Iran, adding that "Sullivan's remarks in that regard were only expression of acts of mischief and ill wishes by the Americans against Iran."
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan claimed on Thursday that Washington still sought a diplomatic solution in nuclear talks with Tehran.
Announcing the Biden administration's plan to send American officials to the West Asia region, Sullivan repeated US baseless accusations against Iran's peaceful nuclear program.
The US accusations against Iran's peaceful nuclear program come despite the fact that Tehran's program is monitored by the nuclear watchdog, IAEA and that the US unilaterally withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal known as the JCPOA in 2018, and the Israeli regime possess a large number of warheads.
KI