Zarif: Iran Commits Never To Develop Nuclear Weapons; "A Lot Of Fearmongering Going On"

ZAKARIA: Donald Trump says that the Iran deal is the most one-sided deal the United States has ever agreed to. You negotiated that deal. Do you take that as a compliment?

ZARIF: Not really because I never believed in zero-sum games. I believed that we were successful in reaching that deal, once we decided to define the objective in a way that was achievable. Instead of having two diametrically opposed objectives, we decided to have a single objective, and that is Iran should have a nuclear program that will never produce nuclear weapons. This was the objective that we decided—both of us—both sides, and that is Iran and P5+1 – to work towards, and we reached a deal that nobody likes. And it’s good because a -- no good deal is a perfect deal. Because you cannot have a perfect deal for both sides. You need to have a deal that is less-than-perfect so that the two sides can reach an understanding, can bargain over. And that is why, I believe, that statement is ill-informed and it doesn’t reflect the reality. It’s a deal that was negotiated and therefore it doesn’t have all the things that we wanted in the deal. It certainly doesn’t have all the things that the United States wanted in the deal.

ZAKARIA: Donald -- President Trump now says that he might well withdraw from the deal or decertify Iran. What would be Iran’s reaction if the President did that?

ZARIF: Well, certification is not a part of the deal. It’s a U.S. internal procedure. It doesn’t absolve President Trump and the administration of the responsibility because the only authority that has been recognized in the nuclear deal to verify is the IAEA. Iran will look at the outcome of this process and will consider its options. Iran has a number of options which include walking away from the deal and going back with greater speed with its nuclear program, which will remain peaceful but which will not address and accept the limitations that we voluntarily accepted over our nuclear program. Let me stress one thing that is—has been a myth here in the United States, and we need to dispel this myth. They say there is a sunset clause in the deal. There is no sunset clause. Iran has committed itself never to develop nuclear weapons, both as a member of the NPT and in the deal itself.

ZAKARIA: But the inspections have a sunset policy.

ZARIF: No, no, no. The inspections don’t have a sunset clause either because Iran has accepted the most intrusive inspections through the Additional Protocol. And if the United States behaves in the way it is supposed to behave in eight years after the signing of the deal, that is in six years from now, Iran would ratify the Additional Protocol, meaning that it will have permanent monitoring of its facilities by the IAEA. What is the limitation, the duration – is the duration of limitations on Iran? Because Iran was under Security Council sanctions, there is a period of time—and a lot of fearmongering has gone over this, in the United States—during this period of time, Iran will observe certain restrictions. After that, Iran will behave like any other non-nuclear-weapons-state member of the NPT. There are a lot of countries with an enrichment program, and Iran will have an enrichment program, will continue to have an enrichment program, and that enrichment program will be strictly under IAEA surveillance.

ZAKARIA: Permanently?

ZARIF: Permanently. So there’s a lot of fearmongering going on. The time limits in the deal, which in fact were the subject of very long negotiations because we believed that there shouldn’t be any limitations on Iran’s rights. Because if we accept all of the monetary mechanisms which we accepted, then Iran should be like any other member of the NPT, but, the other side believed that there needs to be a longer period, and we agreed to the middle, and that is the 10-year that is being talked about.