Iran Foreign Minister to U.S.: "What Did You Gain from Sanctions?"

THE NATIONAL INTEREST

Editor’s Note: The National Interest’s Editor, Jacob Heilbrunn, sat down with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in New York City this morning. The following is a transcript of their conversation.

Jacob Heilbrunn: What do you hope to accomplish with Baroness Ashton? I was told that there might be a road map coming out. Mohammad

Javad Zarif: Well, I certainly hope so. I believe we have a road map. We agreed in Geneva last November to have a long-term agreement with two objectives. One objective is to make sure that Iran’s nuclear program will remain exclusively peaceful, and the second objective is to remove all the sanctions, and I think we can achieve both objectives rather easily. But it seems to me that unfortunately some in the United States look at sanctions as an extremely important asset for them, and find it very difficult, because the entire argument is whether we can have a deal so that sanctions can be removed, so all that the United States needs to do is to get an agreement that can lead to the removal of sanctions. There is nothing else that we’re asking the U.S. to do. We are not asking for security guarantees, we are not asking for any money, we are not asking the United States to do anything—simply to remove the sanctions. Now, in return, Iran is willing to put limits on its nuclear program to make sure, through scientifically proven ways, to make sure that whatever we do will not lead to a nuclear weapon, will not even lead to fissile material for a nuclear weapon. All the U.S. needs to do is to reach a conclusion that a deal with these parameters is better than no deal that would only get the United States to continue these sanctions.

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