Iran has scathingly rejected a US offer of negotiations for a treaty, noting on September 20 that Washington has breached the terms of the last big deal the two countries signed up to, namely the nuclear deal.

Recently appointed US special envoy for Iran, Brian Hook, said the previous day that Washington wanted to negotiate a treaty that included Tehran’s ballistic missile development programme and its regional behaviour, including in conflict-torn hotspots such as Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

The treaty would not be a “personal agreement between two governments like the last one, we seek a treaty”, he said, referring to how while the nuclear deal was signed by ex-president Barack Obama it was never approved by the US Congress.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif rejected the description of the nuclear deal—signed in late 2015 after painstaking negotiations and formally named the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—as a “personal agreement”. On Twitter, he said it was “an int’l accord enshrined in a UN [Security Council resolution]”.

“U.S. has violated its treaty obligations too... Apparently, U.S. only mocks calls for peace,” he added in the message attached to a video of a protester who took to the stage after Hook’s speech, shouting that the reimposed sanctions were hurting Iranian people.

“Not interested in talking”
Hook, speaking before an audience at the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington, DC, acknowledged that the Trump administration had got nowhere in its attempts to persuade Iran to engage in talks. “The Ayatollah, the president and foreign minister have all indicated they are not interested in talking,” Hook was reported as saying by news agencies, in a reference to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif.

US President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the US out of the multilateral nuclear accord in May. It curbed Iranian activities that could conceivably put Tehran on the path to developing a nuclear weapon in return for the dropping of crippling sanctions.

But Trump said the deal was not tough enough on Iran and after cancelling Washington’s participation in it, he launched a campaign of unprecedentedly heavy sanctions designed to throttle the Iranian economy to the point where Tehran comes to the table to renegotiate Iran’s wider role in Middle East affairs. The second wave of those sanctions, which crucially will attempt to block Iran’s lifeline crude oil exports, come into effect on November 5.

The five other major powers that signed the accord with Iran—France, Germany, the UK, China and Russia—pledged to salvage it after the US pullout, but their efforts have so far proved a disappointment to Tehran with many big European investors, fearing secondary sanctions, having exited Iran since Trump announced the US was not sticking with the nuclear deal.

Vote loser
Meanwhile, September 20 saw Trump tweet remarks on one consequence of the US attempt to drive Iranian oil from the world market, that is the upwards pressure it is placing on the oil price. That could prove a vote loser with the American motorist and, certainly mindful of that, Trump has called on Iran’s regional arch-rival Saudi Arabia and other OPEC oil producers to replace the volumes of Iranian oil lost to the market.

In his latest comments on the matter, Trump said on Twitter: “We protect the countries of the Middle East, they would not be safe for very long without us, and yet they continue to push for higher and higher oil prices! We will remember. The OPEC monopoly must get prices down now!”

Saudi Arabia is worried that any sanctions-related spike in oil prices would trigger fresh criticism from Trump, but it also faces doubts over its ability to compensate for a drop in Iranian supply, Reuters reported sources as saying on September 20.

In a visit to Moscow this month, US Energy Secretary Rick Perry said Saudi Arabia, the US and Russia can between them raise global output in the next 18 months to compensate for falling oil supplies from Iran.

September 20 also saw Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh state that Iran would veto any OPEC decision that harms the Islamic Republic. He warned that some oil producing nations were attempting to form an alternative suppliers’ forum that supports US policies hostile to Tehran.

Zanganeh added that the 2016 agreement struck between OPEC countries and allied producers to cut output was in ruins. He cautioned that an OPEC committee set to meet this weekend in Algiers has no authority to impose any new supply arrangements.