Iranian general raises a condition for missile talks with the West

Tabnak – Following US President Donald Trump’s persistent threats to withdraw from the nuclear deal with Iran, some European countries have raised the idea of separate talks with Iran over the country’s missile program. A senior Iranian commander raises a condition for entering such negotiations with the west.

A senior Iranian military commander says the Islamic Republic will hold no negotiations over its missile program unless the United States and Europe dismantle their nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.

"What Americans say out of desperation with regards to limiting the Islamic Republic of Iran's missile capabilities is an unattainable dream resulting from their regional failures and defeats," Deputy Chief of Staff of Iran's Armed Forces Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri said on Saturday. 

He added that if the development of Iran’s defense might was to have been affected by certain political negotiations, the country would not have been able to put the United States in such a position of weakness.

“The precondition for talks on Iran’s missiles is the destruction of the US and Europe’s nuclear weapons and long-range missiles,” Jazayeri went on to say.

Iranian officials have repeatedly underscored that the country will not hesitate to strengthen its military capabilities, including its missile power and that Iran’s defense capabilities will be never subject to negotiations.

In the same vein, a senior adviser to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said in mid-February that Iran’s development of missiles does not concern any countries as it is totally a matter of domestic policy.

Iran, like any other country, acts according to its conditions, and the manufacturing and development of missiles do not concern foreigners, Ali Akbar Velayati told after a meeting with European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman David McAllister in Tehran on February 14. 

Emphasizing that each country chooses its own defense system in proportion to its needs, Velayati said missiles are "defensive means" in Iran’s doctrine.

Jazayeri himself had told before that the calls by the US and some of its allies for negotiations about Iran's ballistic missile program and other defensive matters are "delirious.”

In his remarks on Jabuary 24, the Iranian general said the countries that want to discuss the Islamic Republic's deterrence power today are the same "regimes that have time and again proven their despotism and hegemony."

The discussions about Iran’s missile activities come amid US President Donald Trump's constant efforts to link Iran's missile program to the 2015 multilateral nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Trump has repeatedly described the JCPOA, which was negotiated under his predecessor Barack Obama, as “the worst and most one-sided transaction Washington has ever entered into,” a characterization he often used during his presidential campaign, and threatened to tear it up.