Tehran Not Open to Negotiating, Despite Economic Straits
by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – US President Trump’s ‘maximum pressure policy’ against Iran does not seem to be persuading the Islamic Republic to come to the negotiating table.
Following a meeting between Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron at the G7 summit in Paris yesterday that seemed poised to produce a diplomatic meeting between the American President and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian Tasnim News Agency reported today that a meeting of that sort would only occur once sanctions were lifted.
“The key to positive developments is in Washington’s hands,” Rouhani was reported as saying. “We will not witness any positive development unless the United States abandons the sanctions and corrects the wrong path it has chosen.”
Trump had pointed to a failing Iranian economy the day before as the leverage America has in reaching a diplomatic solution with the increasingly belligerent Iranian state, with oil waivers for countries buying Iranian oil canceled in April in an attempt to bring the Islamic Republic’s oil exports to zero.
Waterways used for transporting oil have become the main battleground in the economic war between Washington, its allies, and Tehran, with an Iranian ship seized by the British in Gibraltar last month causing Iran to retaliate by seizing a British oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz days later.