Zarif: Iran can’t ‘start all over again’ with U.S.

October 3, 2018 - 22:0

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has said Iran cannot “start all over again” with the United States to renegotiate a new deal after U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear agreement.

“You remember the movie ‘50 First Dates,’ when you start all over again the following day. We can’t. This is impossible. You need to be able to have a relationship that is based on some foundations. And we have a document (the nuclear deal) that is a hundred and fifty pages long,” Zarif told the New Yorker in an exclusive interview published on Tuesday, comparing diplomacy with the U.S. to the 2004 movie about a man who keeps having first dates with a woman who has short-term memory loss and forgets him the next day.

Zarif did not rule out the possibility for negotiations with the U.S., saying, “We live in a world of possibilities, so nothing is impossible.” However, he said Iran cannot sit for talks with the U.S. as long as it sees no reliability and realism on the other side.

“I’m not ruling out the prospect of talks provided the necessary conditions for talks, and that is reliability,” he said.

“Reliability is different from trust. Reliability is that when you sign something you are bound by it,” the top diplomat noted. He then cited an old Latin idiom, Pacta sunt servanda, which means “Treaties shall be complied with”, and described it as the basis of international relations.

“Otherwise everything will fall apart… We are waiting for some sense of realism,” Zarif added.