Newly elected Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said he was looking forward to improving relations with European countries, even as he accused them of not honoring their obligations to ease the impact of US sanctions.
Pezeshkian won a runoff last week against ultraconservative former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.
The 69-year-old called for “constructive relations” with Western countries to “bring Iran out of isolation” and is pushing to revive the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.
The United States unilaterally pulled out of the deal in 2018, reimposing sanctions, which led Iran to gradually reduce its commitment to the deal’s terms. The agreement was intended to curb nuclear activity, which Tehran claims is for peaceful purposes.
In an article published Friday night in the English-language Tehran Times newspaper, Pezeshkian said that after the United States withdrew from the 2015 accord, European countries pledged to try to save it and soften the impact of US sanctions.
– European countries violated all these obligations – Pezeshkian wrote.
– Despite those wrong steps, I look forward to engaging in a constructive dialogue with European countries in order to put our relations on the right path, based on the principles of mutual respect and equality – he added.
He stressed that the two sides could explore “numerous fields of cooperation” if Europeans “set aside the self-indulgent moral superiority associated with the manufactured crises that have plagued our relations for so long.”
European Union spokeswoman Nabila Massrali earlier congratulated Pezeshkian on his election, saying the 27-member bloc was “ready to cooperate with the new government in line with the EU’s policy of critical engagement”.
The death of ultra-conservative President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash necessitated the July 6 election, which was not supposed to be held until 2025.
In the second round, Pezeshkian won about 54 percent of the vote to Jalili’s about 44 percent, with a turnout of just under half of Iran’s 61 million voters, reports AFP.
