The head of Iran’s judiciary, Golmachossein Mohseni Ejay, said today that Iran remains open to dialogue with the United States but rejected any policy that would be “imposed” through the threat.
The statement comes against the backdrop of a stalemate in negotiations between the US and Iran aimed at ending a protracted war in the Middle East.
“The Islamic Republic has never shied away from negotiations (…) but we will certainly not accept that someone” will impose a policy on us, Ejei said in a video broadcast on the judiciary website Mizan Online.
“We do not approve of war in any way, we do not want war, we do not want it to continue,” he added.
US President Donald Trump warned the day before yesterday, Wednesday, that the Iranians “better wise up and fast!”
Ejay stressed that Iran “is in no way prepared to renounce its principles and values in the face of this malevolent enemy in order to avoid war or prevent it from continuing.”
The conflict, which erupted on February 28 from an attack launched by Israel and the US against Tehran, has caused thousands of deaths, mostly in Iran and Lebanon, and its effects continue to cause severe turmoil in the global economy.
Although a ceasefire has been in place since 8 April, Washington has imposed a blockade of Iranian ports in retaliation for Tehran’s effective blockade of the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s hydrocarbons consumed before the war passed.
Washington has imposed a blockade of Iranian ports in retaliation for Tehran’s effective blockade of the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s hydrocarbons passed before the war.
Ejay also assessed today that the US had “secured nothing” in the war, adding that Tehran “will not back down” in the negotiations.
