Iran’s ballistic missiles not negotiable, says Raisi

IRANIAN President-elect Ebrahim Raisi said on Monday that he opposes talks on limiting Tehran’s ballistic missile programme and its support for regional proxy forces.

Speaking in the Iranian capital at his first news conference since winning Friday’s presidential election, Raisi also said he is not willing to meet President Joe Biden, even as the two sides work to revive a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.

Asked by a reporter whether he was willing to meet Biden, Raisi simply said, “No.” He added that Iran’s ballistic missiles and regional presence are “not negotiable”.

He made the comments a day after Iranian authorities said they had temporarily shut down the country’s only nuclear power plant because of unspecified technical difficulties.

A statement from the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran late on Sunday said the Bushehr plant on the Persian Gulf was shut down following a “technical defect” and would be disconnected from the national power grid for several days.

Raisi, an ultraconservative Shia cleric, is a hardliner who had the backing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and allied security services in the election. His victory marks a shift from the more reform-minded presidency of Hassan Rouhani, a moderate pragmatist who favoured engagement with the West.

Human rights groups have linked Raisi, who most recently served as chief of Iran’s judiciary, to numerous episodes of repression over decades and said he played a central role in mass killings of dissidents in the late 1980s.

Raisi had “been a member of the ‘death commission’ that forcibly disappeared and extrajudicially executed in secret thousands of political dissidents in Evin and Gohardasht prisons near Tehran in 1988”, Amnesty International said in a statement on Saturday, calling for Raisi to be investigated under international law.

Asked about the allegations on Monday, Raisi said: “I have always defended people’s rights since the beginning of my responsibilities. Human rights have been a pivotal point for me.”

He faces political, economic and diplomatic challenges as Iran continues to grapple with the effects of US sanctions.

Iran and world powers are working to resolve major issues that stand in the way of the United States returning to the landmark accord, from which the Trump administration withdrew in 2018. |