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Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi appeared on India Today for an exclusive interview which allowed the FM to discuss the current situation between Iran and the US.
Araghchi said: “If there is any question, as I said, if there is any concern, we are ready to address, we can build confidence on our nuclear program, and in return we expect sanctions to be terminated – this is a fair deal, that we build confidence, we make sure that our program is peaceful, and would remain peaceful forever.”
Iran’s FM continued: “Everything began from the Islamic Revolution in Iran – I think Americans fail to understand why it happened, so they started hostility against that – in the past 47 years, we have been the subject or the victim of their hostility against us, and they have tried everything.
“They tried coups several times, they’ve helped Saddam Hussein to impose an eight-year war against us, last year, another war, all kinds of sanctions, maximum pressure policy, and they failed – all of them, they failed, why? – Because they have no real information about Iran and Iranian people, and they are fed with misinformation campaigns, mostly by Israeli lobbyists.”
In terms of talks, Araghchi said: “I believe the only solution is to talk with the Iranian people with the language of respect, if they try that language, they will see the result, that we would also talk with them with the same language – but if they want to use pressure, language of force, then the result is as we see – let’s hope that we can change the approaches and come to a better way of dealing with each other.
“They have built a huge military presence around us, if the idea is to threaten us so we capitulate, that is not going to happen,” Araghghi noted.
Continuing Araghchi said: “If you repeat a failed experience, you won’t get any better result, especially since we are more prepared than the previous time, as I said before – there would be no victory for anybody – it would be a devastating war, and since the Americans’ bases are scattered in different places in the region, then unfortunately the whole region would be endangered and involved – so it is a very terrible scenario, I don’t want to talk about that.”
Iran’s FM promised: “We are fully prepared for both options, war, God forbid, and peace – as you know, I’m going to Geneva this afternoon to have the third round of our talks with the US team, and we have made some progress last time – we are able to find some sort of understandings, and I think based on those, we can build something in the form of an agreement, a deal – I think a fair, balanced, and equitable deal is achievable, and we can do it.”
According to FM Araghchi: “Our armed forces are prepared to do their job, and we know how to defend ourselves, and this is what we did last time – we have learned lots of lessons from the last war, so we are even more prepared – And that means, by the way, that the aim is to prevent war, when you are prepared for war, you can prevent it, otherwise you are inviting it into your home – we are fully prepared, not because we want war, but because we want to prevent war.”
Araghchi said: “We cannot forget that once we were negotiating with the US and then they decided to attack us – this time, we are obviously more careful, and we have concern, but if there is a real and serious determination on their side to come to a conclusion, I believe it is achievable.”
In terms of the rage of missiles, Araghchi noted: “President Trump has always complained about fake news, but I think now he himself is, unfortunately, a victim of fake news – we are not developing long-range missiles – we have limited the range of our missiles to below 2,000km intentionally by ourselves because we do not want them to be seen as a global threat.
“This is only for our defence – our missiles are defensive in nature, they are built to create a deterrence and to help us defend ourselves, exactly as they did in last June’s war.”
Talking about the protestors, Araghchi said: “It was mentioned the number of killings in Iran is 32,000 – that is another piece of fake news – we have already published the name of the victims of the recent terrorist operation – it’s only 3,117 victims, which is still very unfortunate.”
Araghchi concluded: “We have published the names, and we have said publicly that if anybody thinks that the number is more than this, please give us the evidence.”
Commenting on the protests, Araghchi said: “On 8 January, we faced a completely new phenomenon – some elements came into this protest among protestors and demonstrators with guns, and they started shooting at our police forces – we found out that there are instructions coming from outside – Israel.
“It’s very well planned to perhaps conduct something like a coup in Iran, there were hundreds of armed elements who suddenly appeared in many Iranian cities – they acted in ways similar to terrorist groups, like Daesh (ISIS) – some police officers were beheaded, and burned some of them alive – they began shooting at people in a blindly manner.”
Araghchi continued: “What was very strange to us was that they are even killing protestors, because President Trump had said that if there were killings, he would intervene – so the apparent goal was to increase the number of deaths in order to draw the United States into the situation.”
When asked what happened if the US were to target and kill Supreme Leader Khamenei, Araghchi said: “We have a mechanism which is in our constitution, there is an assembly of experts that, whenever needed, will elect a new Supreme Leader for the country, a new leader, exactly as happened after the demise of the late Ayatollah Khomeini – in less than 24 hours, they elected a new leader.
“If a new leader were elected, that would happen whenever needed, so we have no problem with that – I have seen in the US media and elsewhere suggestions about assassinating the leader and these kind of things – but this is a system that everybody would replace in a very well-established mechanism that exists in the system itself, so nothing would happen.
“Our system does not depend on individuals, it is supported by the people, so I am not worried at all – as the top commanders were replaced immediately in the middle of the war and nothing happened, we were able to continue our self-defence – I’m sure if anything like that is repeated, there is no problem with the system.”
