Zarif: Republican letter on nuke talks a ‘propaganda ploy’

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said late Monday that the letter drafted by Republican lawmakers addressed to Iranian leaders cautioning against a nuclear deal with the United States was “mostly a propaganda ploy.”

In a statement released by the Iranian mission to the UN, Zarif said it was “very interesting that while negotiations are still in progress and while no agreement has been reached, some political pressure groups are so afraid even of the prospect of an agreement that they resort to unconventional methods, unprecedented in diplomatic history.”

Zarif “expressed astonishment that some members of US Congress find it appropriate to write to leaders of another country against their own president and administration,” according to the statement.

“This indicates that like [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, who considers peace as an existential threat, some are opposed to any agreement, regardless of its content,” he added.

Netanyahu has been a very vocal opponent of a bad deal with Iran. He appeared before the US Congress last week to warn of the dangers of an agreement that would allow Iran to become a nuclear threshold state with less than a year’s breakout time capacity to reach a bomb.

Forty-seven Republicans, including Senate leaders and several potential 2016 presidential candidates, wrote an open letter to Iran’s leader, warning any deal with Obama might not be honored in future. In the letter, Republicans said that without congressional approval, any deal between Iran and the US would be merely an agreement between Obama and Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

A change of administration, said Zarif, “does not in any way relieve the next administration from international obligations undertaken by its predecessor in a possible agreement about Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.”

“I wish to enlighten the authors that if the next administration revokes any agreement with ‘the stroke of a pen,’ as they boast, it will have simply committed a blatant violation of international law,” he warned.

He emphasized that should a deal be reached between the P5+1 world powers, including the US, and Iran, the agreement would be binding on the UK, France, Russia, China and Germany as well.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has entered these negotiations in good faith and with the political will to reach an agreement, and it is imperative for our counterparts to prove similar good faith and political will in order to make an agreement possible,” said Zarif.

The GOP letter addressed to Iran’s leaders was also blasted by US President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

Biden lashed out at Republican lawmakers for their “highly misleading” letter Monday, a letter he described as “false as it is dangerous.”

“The letter sent on March 9th by 47 Republican Senators to the Islamic Republic of Iran, expressly designed to undercut a sitting president in the midst of sensitive international negotiations, is beneath the dignity of an institution I revere,” Biden said in a statement.

Obama said the letter is ironic because, in his words, some members of Congress appear to want to align themselves with “hardliners” in Iran.

The president termed this “an unusual coalition.”

The White House responded angrily, accusing the senators of interference and continuing a “partisan strategy to undermine the president’s ability to conduct foreign policy and advance our national security.

With a March deadline looming, negotiators are furiously working to agree to a deal that would curb Iran’s nuclear program in return for reducing Western sanctions.

The deal is seen as a key foreign-policy goal of the Obama administration.

AP contributed to this report.