“The nuclear deal is the nuclear deal,” said Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in response to comments by both U.S. President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron at the White House a day earlier in which Macron suggested that changes could be made to (or alongside) a multi-lateral nuclear agreement in order to save it from sabotage by the Trump administration.
In a televised speech in Iran on Wednesday, Rouhani said that he spoke with Macron at length—presumably before Tuesday’s events in Washington, D.C.— and told the French president “explicitly that we will not add anything to the deal or remove anything from it, even one sentence.”
“You have no clue about politics, no clue about the law or international treaties. You are just a businessman, a tradesman. You are a tower builder. How is he going to pass judgment on international issues?”
—Iranian President Hassan RouhaniNot sparing Trump direct rebuke, Rouhani blasted the U.S. president as unqualified for his position, declaring: “You have no clue about politics, no clue about the law or international treaties. You are just a businessman, a tradesman. You are a tower builder. How is he going to pass judgment on international issues?”
Rouhani warned that Trump and Macron cannot simply re-write a deal that was agreed to by seven parties. “Who allowed you to do that?” the Iranian president asked. “For what? With what right?”
He continued by saying that by agreeing to the the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Program of Action (JCPOA)—and by upholding all their commitments to it—Iran had “shown goodwill to the world.” And still, Rouhani reaffirmed—as Iran Foreign Minister Mohammad Javar Zarif has also said plainly to U.S. news outlets in recent days—that with or without the deal his country will “not seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction.”
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