Iran FM says Netanyahu ‘sees peace as existential threat’

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accuses Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “seeing peace as an existential threat” in comments made on CNN.

In an interview with Christiane Amanpour, Zarif says about the negotiations with the P5+1 that they are meant “to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program will always remain peaceful and to remove all the restrictions that have been imposed on Iran, in our view – unjustifiably.”

Zarif says Iran believes “that we can in fact reach an agreement, if there is the necessary political will to make the tough choices, and everybody has to make tough choices.”

He continues that “people have been predicting for the past 20 years Iran was a year away from making a bomb and that prediction has been proven wrong, time and again, but unfortunately that is the reality, that this hysteria that has been fanned continues to be fanned.”

In a hint of criticism against the P5+1, Zarif adds that “the other side needs to exercise the same political will, the same resolve, make the same tough choices that sanctions and an agreement don’t go together. You can either have sanctions and continue to seek the path of confrontation or try to resolve this issue through negotiations and through an agreement. I believe we are very close to the latter but people choose the former that is their prerogative but that a wrong decision they’ll be making.”

Asked about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Tuesday, Zarif avoids mentioning him by name, but says the speech had “no effect on the negotiating table.” Zarif says he sees that Netanyahu “is trying, and some people who associate with him try to create an atmosphere of hysteria, an atmosphere of fear mongering, based on lies and deception that try to prevent a deal from taking shape.

“The only reason, the only explanation you can have here is,” Zarif charges, is “that some people consider peace and stability as an existential threat, because a deal cannot be threatening to anybody unless you want conflict and tension and mistrust and crisis.”