Daily Times

Iran’s foreign minister slammed the European Union for “extremism” in relationship to Tehran in an interview published Monday ahead of a meeting with his French counterpart.

“In order to keep the United States in the Iran nuclear deal, European countries are suffering from extremism and this will ultimately undermine Europe’s policy,” Mohammad Javad Zarif told reformist newspaper Etemad.

France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian arrived in Tehran early Monday for talks, with Europe pushing for pledges over Iran’s ballistic missile programme.

It is the first visit by one of the European signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal since US President Donald Trump set an ultimatum that he would abandon it if it was not “improved”.

But Zarif warned in the interview that “any action to satisfy the party that has most violated the nuclear agreement is useless”. “At present, two groups have violated the nuclear deal: the United States and the Europeans. The Americans because of Washington’s policy and the Europeans because of the US policy,” he said.

“The Europeans, because of the policy of the US could not meet their commitments, especially in the banking sector. Therefore these two groups are not in a position to set conditions for the country that has fully implemented its commitments,” the minister added.

Published in Daily Times, March 6^th 2018.