Rouhani says Iran isn’t a ‘bargaining chip’ in US elections

Joe Biden wants to see the deal, made in the era of Barack Obama, survive and has said his administration would “rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations” if Iran returns to full compliance with the deal. 

But on Monday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif ruled out renegotiating the terms should Biden win the presidency. 

“The United States did try its best to get a good deal. And the previous administration, where candidate Biden was the vice president, believed it was a good deal. Now, we’re not going to negotiate a deal,” Zarif told the Council on Foreign Relations in a virtual interview. 

“It’s immaterial for us who sits in the White House. For us, what is important is how they behave,” he added.

Nearly every member of the UN Security Council has dismissed the administration’s effort to unilaterally reinstate sanctions lifted under the Iran deal. On Sunday, France, Germany and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement saying the administration’s “purported notification” of reimposed sanctions “would be incapable of legal effect.”

On Monday, the United States imposed a raft of new sanctions targeting Iran’s Defense Ministry, Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro, and more than two dozen other Iranian individuals and entities.