President Donald Trump's administration cannot expect to enter into negotiations with Iran while continuing to uphold maximum pressure policies, as both are "mutually exclusive, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations said Tuesday, while also denying his country was behind the sabotage of four cargo ships off the coast of the United Arab Emirates over the weekend.
"They cannot expect Iran to accept an offer under pressure," Ambassador Majid Takht Ravanchi told CNN's "New Day." "The policy of maximum pressure is creating pressure for the Iranian people. We can't accept a dialogue based on intimidation and threats."
He also called allegations that Iran was behind the cargo ship attacks "fake intelligence."
"These allegations are being given by certain people in Washington who whisper in people's ears, and some other people in our region, like [Benjamin] Netanyahu, these people are spreading lies to provoke, to prepare the ground for conflict in our neighborhood," Ravanchi said. He added Iran is calling for a "thorough investigation" into the acts of sabotage, as dealing with security in the Persian Gulf is important for Iran as well.
Ravanchi said reports that the Pentagon plans to deploy some 120,000 U.S. troops to the Persian Gulf are "psychological warfare" and he doesn't know what Trump means by his comments about Iran taking action in the region.
Iran has restarted some of its nuclear activity, and Ravanchi said that's because a year after Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal, "we came to this conclusion that nothing actually is happening as regards to Iran's interest, based on what we agreed in the JCPOA.
Iran, though, does not want nuclear weapons because "it is against our religion," said Ravanchi.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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