TEHRAN — In an interview with ISNA news agency published on Monday, presidential hopeful Saeed Mohammad has said that his priority will be to strengthen internal abilities and also prioritizing relations with 15 neighboring countries in the foreign policy area.

“Our priority to prove the effectiveness of the system and build public trust is to continue foreign interactions, especially with the P5+1, and, of course, in other international arenas, to achieve a new space with the policy of balancing (relations between) the East and the West, as well as improving relations with 15 neighboring countries based on the slogan of ‘neighbors first’. In my government, issues will be addressed with an internal empowerment approach,” he said.
 
He said he believes that the Americans will never lift sanctions on Iran completely, predicting that they may temporarily ease them, but they will never lift them permanently. 

He also said the current talks in Vienna to revive the JCPOA are a “show” by the government in the run up to the June 18 presidential elections “The Vienna talks is a show for presidential elections.” 

According to the presidential hopeful, in this round of negotiations, concessions will be given to Iran on a part-time basis.

“I believe that we should follow the negotiations of the nuclear deal within the framework of the issues raised in the discourse of the Revolution,” he noted.

He added that it was the Americans left the JCPOA.

“They must first return to the deal and fulfill their obligations, and we will verify their implementation, and then we will return to fulfilling our obligations in the deal as well. We will also not accept any possible negotiations on our missiles or regional issues, and will only negotiate within the framework of the JCPOA agreement. In my opinion, the Americans and the Europeans are not interested in lifting the sanctions, but explicitly say that they are looking for the second and third JCPOAs,” stated Mohammad, the former director of the IRGC’s Khatam-al Anbiya Construction Headquarters.

He stated Iran is trying to revive the current JCPOA and lift the sanctions and create a better condition for the people. However, the presidential hopeful says, since the Americans don’t abide by their commitments his government’s approach could be different because Iranians have suffered from U.S. sanctions for 8 years.

“One approach was to ask for the sanctions to be lifted, another could be for us to empower the internal capacity of the country and neutralize the sanctions,” he explained.

SA/PA