TEHRAN - Kamal Kharrazi, chairman of Iran’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, has said that Iran will not surrender to bullying and will continue its path more determinedly.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has shown during the past 40 years that it will not surrender to the foreigners’ bullying behavior and will continue its path more determinedly despite pressure,” IRNA quoted him as saying on Friday.

He added, “West should know that neither the economic sanctions nor the arms embargo will make Iran return from the independent strategic path it has taken.”

Kharrazi also said that “unilateral” and “wrong” policies of the U.S. and the E3 - France, Germany, and the UK - to stop Iran’s peaceful nuclear program have always been fruitless.

“The United States’ attempts to extend arms embargo on Iran, the three European countries’ action in the International Atomic Energy Agency against Iran and suspicious behavior of the agency’s director-general will lead to collapse of the JCPOA [the 2015 nuclear deal],” warned Kharrazi, who was Iran’s foreign minister from 1997 to 2005.

The United States has stepped up calls for an extension of a UN arms embargo on Iran since April. The UN arms embargo on Iran is set to expire in October.

The U.S. administration has made such action despite the fact that Donald Trump officially quit the nuclear deal in May 2018 and slapped the harshest sanctions in history, including a total oil embargo, against Iran.

Also, the 35-member IAEA board of governors passed a resolution on June 19 demanding access to two old places under the allegation that nuclear work may have been done there.

France, Britain, and Germany, the three European parties to the 2015 nuclear deal, submitted the draft resolution to the IAEA board for approval.

Rafael Grossi, director-general of the IAEA, has made anti-Iran allegations, saying that Tehran had refused to grant access to what he called “two nuclear sites”.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says the three European countries signatory to the nuclear deal are absolutely powerless against the U.S. coercion.

“E3 must stop public face-saving and muster the courage to state publicly what they admit privately, their failure to fulfill even own JCPOA duties due to total impotence in resisting the US bullying behind the facade, E3 are accessories to Trump and Netanyahu—and in no position to counsel Iran,” Zarif wrote in a tweet on June 19.

NA/PA