Iranian prez-elect won’t meet Biden but backs N-talks
President-elect Ebrahim Raisi on Monday backed talks between Iran and six world powers to revive a 2015 nuclear deal but flatly rejected meeting US President Joe Biden, even if Washington removed all sanctions.
In his first news conference since he was elected on Friday, the hardline cleric said his foreign policy priority would be improving ties with Iran's Gulf Arab neighbours, while calling on Iran's regional rival Saudi Arabia to immediately halt its intervention in Yemen.
Raisi, 60, a strident critic of the West, will take over from pragmatist Hassan Rouhani on Aug. 3 as Iran seeks to salvage the tattered nuclear deal and be rid of punishing US sanctions that have crippled Iran's economy.
"We support the negotiations that guarantee our national interests ... America should immediately return to the deal and fulfil its obligations under the deal," he said.
Negotiations have been under way in Vienna since April to work out how Iran and
the United States can both return to compliance with the nuclear pact, which Washington abandoned in 2018 under then-president Donald Trump before reimposing sanctions on Iran.
Iran has subsequently breached the deal's limits on enrichment of uranium, designed to minimise the risk of it developing nuclear weapons potential. Tehran has long denied having any such ambition.
Oil holds near $72
Oil held near $72 a barrel as inconclusive nuclear talks between world powers and Iran — which has elected a new hardline president — allayed prospects for a swift revival of the Islamic Republic’s crude exports.