NEW YORK: France’s foreign minister called Monday on Iran to accept a proposal to revive a nuclear deal, warning that it will not get anything better.
At the start of the annual UN General Assembly in New York, Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna did not rule out that President Emmanuel Macron would meet his counterpart Ebrahim Raisi.
“We’ll see what this week brings,” she told reporters. “The window of opportunity seems ready to close again.”
“We are repeatedly saying… there is no better offer for Iran,” she said. “It’s up to them to make a decision.”
Raisi, in an interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” said he was open to a “good” deal but pressed for guarantees from President Joe Biden that the United States will not again leave the accord under a future leader — a promise that the US administration considers impossible.
Former president Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 deal under which Iran drastically scaled back nuclear work in return for promises of sanctions relief.
The Biden administration says the deal remains the best way to restrict Iran’s nuclear program but has been increasingly pessimistic that Tehran will agree to a compromise negotiated by European Union mediators.
Separately, Colonna said she met Monday in New York with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
She said she urged him to allow a security zone around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine, whose occupation by Moscow has raised mounting concerns.
Colonna also plans meetings with her counterparts from China, India and Australia, whose relationship with France was badly strained last year when it canceled a major submarine deal in favor of US nuclear models.
Sunday, Tehran would be serious about reviving a deal on its nuclear program if there were guarantees the US would not again withdraw from it, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said in an interview.
Last month, Iran’s foreign minister said Tehran needed stronger guarantees from Washington for the revival of the 2015 deal and urged the UN atomic watchdog to drop its “politically motivated probes” of Tehran’s nuclear work. –Agencies
Speaking to the CBS show 60 Minutes in a interview conducted last Tuesday, Raisi said, “If it’s a good deal and fair deal, we would be serious about reaching an agreement.”
In his remarks ahead of a visit to the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week, Raisi added, “It needs to be lasting. There need to be guarantees. If there were a guarantee, then the Americans could not withdraw from the deal.”
He said the Americans had broken their promises on the deal, under which Tehran had restrained its nuclear program in exchange for relief from US, European Union and UN economic sanctions. “They did it unilaterally. They said that, ‘I am out of the deal.’ Now making promises is becoming meaningless,” he said.
