Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian underlined that Iran will never tolerate Israeli presence near its frontiers.
Speaking at a televised program on Saturday night, Amir Abdollahian expressed concern regarding certain provocations by the Israeli regime near Iran’s borders in the Republic of Azerbaijan.
The Zionist regime, he said, used the flare-up of tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region earlier this year to establish a presence in parts of Azerbaijan.
He, however, called the efforts “abortive” and said, “We never tolerate the Zionist regime’s presence and its provocative measures near the Islamic Republic’s borders.”
A recent military maneuver conducted inside Iran near Azerbaijan’s borders was meant to “relay a message (of warning) to the Zionists,” the top diplomat reminded, as quoted by Tasnim news agency.
“The Islamic Republic has always declared its position of calling the Israeli regime illegitimate,” the senior diplomat stated.
“We (just) know one country that is named Palestine, with the Noble Al-Quds as its capital. For many reasons, the Zionist regime has no place in the region’s future,” he added, Press TV reported.
“The Zionists have taken even the Jewish hostage in the occupied territories,” Amir Abdollahian noted, reiterating the Islamic Republic’s position that the territories’ fate has to be decided in a referendum that is attended by all the people there, notwithstanding their ethnicity or nationality.
Nuclear Talks
On the talks on the revival of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Amir Abdollahian said Iran was to return to negotiations that were resumed in Vienna earlier this year.
“Our logic is a logic of dialog. We will return to the negotiations soon,” he said.
Meanwhile, the top Iranian diplomat revealed that he was approached by “Americans from various channels” while attending the United Nations General Assembly in New York late last month.
“I asked one of the people carrying an American message if the American intention was real, to which he replied, ‘I think it is real’,” said Amir-Abdollahian. “I said, if their intentions are real, they should release some of Iran’s blocked assets, for example $10 billon, and make a move so that we can say that Biden is different from Trump.”
In the same ccontext, he said, the talks should be rewarding for the Islamic Republic and the country has to be able to draw all of the nuclear agreement’s “practical benefits.”
Nevertheless, Tehran does not tie implementation of its foreign and economic policy to the talks and the agreement, Amir Abdollahian noted.
“The government has an economic development plan that is advancing apace. Nor are we supposed to make the Foreign Ministry await the JCPOA (‘s fruition),” he concluded.
Source: Iranian media
