Zarif: US Gained Nothing from Iran Sanctions

In an interview with the National Interest’s Editor, Jacob Heilbrunn, in New York on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Zarif reiterated that Tehran came to the negotiating table on its peaceful nuclear program irrespective of the sanctions.

What follows is an excerpt of his interview.

“All that is required is for the US to come to the understanding that sanctions are not an asset. And I think that calculation is not that difficult. If I may, I’ll just give you a very, maybe simplistic, but realistic calculation. For the past eight years, there have been sanctions imposed on Iran, by the United Nations with the pressure of the United States, and by the United States. The net result of all these sanctions is that when the sanctions started to be imposed, we had less than two hundred centrifuges. Today, we have twenty thousand. So if people start calculating, they’ll see that sanctions have produced all these centrifuges. So Iran can claim that we have withstood all this pressure. We have paid the economic price, but withstood the pressure. At least we gained this. Now, I’m asking the United States, what did you gain from sanctions? What is it? If you want to show what the United States gained from sanctions, I doubt that they can have anything to show for it. If they say they brought Iran to the negotiating table, I tell them that we were prepared to negotiate. When (then nuclear negotiating team head) Dr. Rouhani and I (then Iran's ambassador to the UN) were negotiating in 2005, there were no sanctions and we were prepared to negotiate. So nothing, no sanctions brought Iran to the negotiating table. The only thing that these sanctions have produced is the resentment of the Iranian people that the United States is putting pressure on them. Nothing else.”

“So, there is a deal at hand. Within reach. The question is whether the United States will come to the realization that sanctions were a means to an end -in the best case scenario- not an end in themselves. And if there is a deal, then sanctions are not such a big asset to be so obsessed with.”

Nuclear negotiators representing Iran and the six world powers (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) are now in New York to hold a fresh round of talks on Tehran’s civilian nuclear work.

The negotiations are expected to run until at least September 26 on the sidelines of next week's annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly.

In November 2013, Iran and world powers signed an interim deal in Geneva, which took effect on January 20 and expired six months later on July 20.

In July, Tehran and the six countries agreed to extend negotiations until November 24 in the hope of clinching a final deal.