TEHRAN— Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabiei on Tuesday condemned U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price’s interventionist comments about the recent presidential election in Iran, saying the U.S., with its flawed democracy, is in no position to comment about elections in other countries.

Pointing to the June 18 presidential election in Iran in which Ebrahim Raisi won by a landslide victory, Rabiei told a virtual press conference that the holding of the election and people’s participation were a “big no” to those were encouraging the Iranian citizens to boycott the election.

Rabiei was responding to Price who on Monday claimed the U.S. views the process that made Raisi Iran's president-elect as “pretty manufactured”.

The Iranian government said, “Despite the flashy show of democracy in the U.S., everybody is aware today how defective and corrupt their proclaimed democracy is.” 

Rabiei also said President Hassan Rouhani has instructed the cabinet of ministers to work with the president-elect to convey the administration’s experience to the new one, which will start its work in mid-August.

Rouhani paid a visit to Raisi on Saturday and told him that his administration was ready to provide him with any information required for the transition period.

“Revival of nuclear deal within reach”

On the latest developments in the Vienna talks on the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal, Rabiei also said an agreement would soon be reached.

“What has remained is all about political issues,” the spokesman said, expressing hope that the nuclear deal negotiations will yield results during the tenure of outgoing Rouhani administration.

“If, for whatever reason, the negotiations would not end in this administration, then the next administration has to take the burden of negotiating and decision-making,” he added. 

In remarks on Monday, Rouhani also seemed optimistic about the revitalization of the nuclear deal.

Talks for reviving the JCPOA – the official name for the nuclear deal – started in early April. The sixth round of talks ended just recently. 

Speaking to Iran’s state TV on Sunday, Abbas Araqchi, Iran’s lead negotiator in the Vienna talks, said, “The sixth round of Vienna talks ended today with a meeting of the Joint Commission. At the Joint Commission meeting, we summarized a series of intensive talks that took place over the past seven or eight days. All delegations acknowledged that progress had been made fairly well and that everyone had emphasized the seriousness of continuing to work towards an agreement, but all agreed that some key issues needed to be decided by decision-makers in the countries.”

According to Araqchi, Iran is seeking guarantees that the JCPOA will not be violated by the U.S. with a change of president as it happened by Donald Trump.

“It is natural that one of our serious issues in these negotiations has been and is to ensure that what the U.S. administration has done to JCPOA is not repeated, and in this regard, we need to come up with guarantees that assure us what the previous administration did, i.e. the re-imposition of sanctions and the withdrawal from the JCPOA, will not happen again. This is our natural desire and of course, it is not possible for us to return to the JCPOA without such a guarantee. This is one of our serious topics and we have reached some points in this regard, but it is one of the issues that we need to work on more,” Araqchi stated.

SA/PA