ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iran will only negotiate if the United States lifts sanctions pressure and apologizes for its “illegal” actions, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday.
Rouhani was responding to Washington’s latest measures to squeeze oil exports – the Islamic Republic’s main source of revenue.
“We have always been a man of negotiation and diplomacy, the same way that we’ve been a man of war and defense,” Rouhani said, according to state media.
“Negotiation is only possible if all the pressures are lifted, they apologize for their illegal actions and there is mutual respect.”
Washington imposed sanctions on Iran’s oil sector in November 2018 after withdrawing from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
The US initially granted seven major importers of Iranian crude a waiver period in which to wean off Iranian oil and find alternatives.
On Monday, however, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced no further waivers would be authorized after May.
“We will continue to apply maximum pressure on the Iranian regime until its leaders change their destructive behavior, respect the rights of the Iranian people, and return to the negotiating table,” Pompeo told reporters in Washington.
In response to the news, oil prices jumped by around three percent.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, speaks to workers in Tehran, April 24, 2019. Photo: Khamenei
At an event in Tehran on Wednesday marking Iran’s National Week of Labor and Laborers, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran would defy the sanctions and continue exporting oil.
“Their efforts won’t get them anywhere. We will export our oil as much as we need to and we intend to,” he said, according to a statement on his website.
He also warned the measures “won’t be left without a response”.