TEHRAN – Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has announced that the recent letter he sent to the UN secretary-general about the United States' non-adherence to its commitments under the 2015 Iran nuclear deal will soon be published as a book.

On July 20, 2021, Zarif wrote his last and long letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres which was released for the first time by the Iranian Foreign Ministry on July 30. 

On July 20, 2021, and on the sixth anniversary of the ratification of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, Foreign Minister Zarif, in a letter to the UN chief, documented a wrap-up of the Western parties' non-implementation of their commitments as a document at the UN Secretariat.

The letter was published in both Persian and English with an introduction by Foreign Minister Zarif, along with the documents of six years of Western non-implementation of the JCPOA written by him on various occasions.

The collection written by Zarif has been prepared in four pages by the Institute for Political and International Studies, the digital version of which is now available to the public.

The printed version of the books will also be available in the publishing market next week, according to the Institute for Political and International Studies.

Zarif confirmed that the letter will be published soon. Speaking on the sidelines of the last session of Hassan Rouhani’s cabinet on Sunday, he said, “In a letter, I wrote to the secretary-general of the United Nations two weeks ago, we recorded the history of this non-compliance since September 2016. And these misdeeds became a book that will be published soon. This shows that we tried our best, but factors outside the government and factors outside the country prevented us from achieving the result we wanted.”

In what appeared to be his parting shot, Zarif elaborated on the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s achievements during his tenure as Iran’s top diplomat. He said the ministry made efforts to import Covid vaccines while focusing on domestic production of these vaccines. 

“As the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we had a duty to help access foreign vaccines, which we did in the service of the Ministry of Health, and we are happy that more than 10 million foreign vaccines have entered the country so far, and we plan to import further 10 million more in the coming months. And this important shortcoming that is general vaccination will be addressed,” he stated.

Zarif noted, “Efforts have been made in the field of economic diplomacy and credibility abroad, and I think today the world is looking at Iranians as a reasonable and reliable person and a person who stands by his word but does not bow to oppression.”

“World realized it is America that needs to change its behavior”

He went on to inveigh against the U.S. non-compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

“We defeated the Americans in the JCPOA despite the fact that the American economic power was able to put pressure on the people, but they failed three times in two months in the United Nations. These show that our people have proved to the world who creates the problem in the world and who must change his behavior. Today, the people of the world realized that it is America that needs to change its behavior. You remember that the United States was announcing that Iran should change its behavior, and this achievement is a gift to these great people,” the Iranian foreign minister pointed out.

Responding to a question on what was the most important thing that he did in the last eight years, Zarif said, “The most important thing we did was the JCPOA.”

“JCPOA was a temporary development to exclude Iran from Chapter Seven of the UN Charter. If the JCPOA was not in our favor, they [the West] would not have made a condition for it to continue today. They feel sad at the JCPOA, so they try to add regional and missile issues to it while we want to add nothing to it. We believe in the JCPOA in its original format. We are not saying to add other issues to the JCPOA. Who says to add issues to the JCPOA? The United States and Europe. Why do they say? Because it shows that they could not do this in the JCPOA.”

“By the end of the week, the Etela’at Institute will publish a six-volume history of the JCPOA negotiations, and people will see what their servants and devotees have done at the Foreign Ministry,” Zarif said, noting, “The fact that the United States and Europe are non-compliant countries and failed to live up to their promise does not mean that we trusted them, it does not mean that we negotiated badly, but it does indicate that there are a number of countries in the world that do not adhere to international rules. They are not committed.”

In response to the question about what was the best thing that he wanted to do in these eight years but could not, he said, “I wanted us to be able to attract more capital to the country. $85 billion was an investment proposal. I wanted to attract these funds to serve the Iranian people. If we had had the opportunity to attract these funds, the sanctions on Iran would have been much lower.”

He added, “We can be vaccinated against sanctions in two ways. One is by making the world dependent on ourselves, whether in the global value cycle or in foreign investment, in a way that imposing sanctions on us affects others, and the second is to reduce the effects of sanctions on Iran. The same thing as what the Leader called Resistance Economy. These two points can prevent sanctions, part of which is not in the hands of the Foreign Ministry. We did what we could do.”

Zarif stated, “We do not trust anyone except God and our people, which is the way of life in the world. We do not trust any strangers, but not trusting does not mean not interacting.”

Zarif asserted, “We, as the Islamic Republic, have a duty to interact with the world, to interact with open eyes, we must not trust anyone. International relations are not a place of trust, even the closest ally in international relations cannot be trusted, but we do not have an ally.”

“I testify that none of the negotiators ever trusted the United States. If we wanted to trust, the result would be the same two-page document that Trump signed with some. If you see, we ended up with 160 pages of the document because of distrust. It was because we wanted to express all issues.”