President Hassan Rouhani said any administration after the November elections in the United States will have no choice but to surrender to the resilience of the Iranian nation.
“We are not a bargaining chip in the US elections and domestic policy,” he said in a videoconference address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, according to the full text of his speech published by President.ir.
The current US president, Donald Trump, has imposed sweeping sanctions on Tehran after withdrawing Washington from the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated under his predecessor Barack Obama which he described as “the worst deal ever”.
“We withdrew from the terrible Iran nuclear deal and imposed crippling sanctions on the world’s leading state sponsor of terror,” Trump alleged in his UN address earlier on Tuesday.
His so-called maximum pressure campaign was aimed at forcing Iranian leaders to renegotiate a broader deal that would cover non-nuclear issues, such as the country’s missile program and regional policies.
Iran has refused to enter talks with the US unless all sanctions are lifted and their economic damage is compensated for.
Rouhani said a government cannot just claim that it seeks negotiations for a “big deal’ while reneging on the outcome of years of multilateral talks, violating a UN Security Council resolution and punishing others for abiding by it.
“The United States can impose neither negotiations, nor war on us. Life is hard under sanctions. However, life without independence would be harder,” he told the UN General Assembly, adding that the Iranian nation will not trade their political freedom with foreign interference.
Time for Right Choice
The Trump administration also slapped new sanctions on Iran on Monday to support its assertion that all UN sanctions eased under the nuclear agreement are now reinstated as a result of a so-called “snapback” process that the US has supposedly triggered without legal entitlement.
Washington resorted to the process after its bid to extend Iran’s arms embargo beyond its October expiration was rejected by the UN Security Council.
A majority of UNSC member countries have also refused to recognize the resumption of global sanctions on Tehran, arguing that the US had no right to activate the process in the first place as it had already quit the deal.
Rouhani expressed appreciation to the presidents of UNSC member countries who have twice rejected the US unlawful attempts to exploit the Security Council and its Resolution 2231 that enshrined the nuclear deal.
“This is a victory not just for Iran, but for the global community—during the transitional international order in the post-western world—that an aspirant of hegemony is humiliated in such self-created isolation,” he said.
He also called on the global community to say “no” to bullying and arrogance, stressing that now is the time for making the right choice.
“The era of dominance and hegemony is long over. Our nations and children deserve a better and safer world based on the rule of law,” he said.
