President Masoud Pezeshkian has said Iran will never “bend the knee” after almost seven months of war with the US and Israel, but is ready for a diplomatic solution to the conflict.
Responding to US President Donald Trump’s threat to “annihilate” the Islamic Republic if a deal is not reached soon, he told the UN General Assembly: “The resistance of the Iranian people will only increase in the face of sanctions, increased pressure, increased bullying.”
Pezeshkian also insisted any deal would have to include an end to the US blockade stopping Iranian ships from using a key Gulf waterway.
“It cannot be the case that everyone benefits from the Strait of Hormuz while we are denied access,” he said.
There was no immediate comment from the US, whose delegation walked out of the chamber at the start of Pezeshkian’s address.
“The US president described us as terrorists. We have been the victims of terrorism,” Iran’s president told the UN in New York.
He then held up a photo of the country’s late Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in a strike on his residence when the US and Israel launched a joint attack in late February.
He also presented pictures of some of the more than 175 civilians, two thirds of them children, who Iranian authorities say were killed in missile strikes on a primary school in Minab and a sports complex in Lamerd that day. The US has denied striking Lamerd and said it is still investigating what happened in Minab.
“Our innocent people have been the targets of cowardly attacks and aggressions imposed on our country. And we defended ourselves with utmost strength,” Pezeshkian said.
Iran retaliated for the massive US-Israeli air campaign by launching deadly missile and drone attacks on Israel and neighbouring Gulf Arab states which host US military bases.
It also effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of global oil and gas shipments usually pass, by attacking commercial vessels in the Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. The US responded by imposing a blockade of Iranian ports and ships in April.
In June, the US and Iran reached a preliminary agreement to end the war and reopen the strait, but it collapsed within weeks after the Iranian attacks on shipping resumed and the US reinstated its blockade.
Iran wants to retain some measure of control over the strait and collect fees from vessels that use it, which the US has rejected.
In his address to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump said he faced a “big decision” – either negotiate a deal that would allow Iranians to rebuild their country, or “annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly”.
Pezeshkian said the threat was “a sign of a bullying mentality”.
“[Trump] must know that the resistance of the Iranian people will only increase in the face of sanctions, increased pressure, increased bullying. We will never bow our head or bend the knee,” he said.
But he added: “We are ready for dialogue and diplomacy and negotiations without accepting the language of force.”
Pezeshkian made clear that the US blockade would have to end as part of any deal.
“It cannot be the case that everyone benefits from the Strait of Hormuz while we are denied access to shipping through this waterway,” he said.
He also reiterated that Iran would not give up its right to have a civilian nuclear programme and that it would not seek to develop nuclear weapons.
“We say it clearly: no nuclear weapons and no limitations on peaceful nuclear technology.”
Trump argued in his speech that the war had prevented Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb and demanded that its leaders “relinquish their nuclear ambitions”.
On Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and US envoy Steve Witkoff held indirect talks brokered by Qatari mediators on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
Witkoff said he hoped the discussions – the first since June – would “prove constructive and promising”, adding that the mediators would continue their work.
But Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baqai said the talks were “not anything new” and that Araghchi had maintained Iran’s conditions, including the end of the US blockade and the release of frozen Iranian assets.
By BBC News
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