Iran says Rouhani-Trump meeting 'unimaginable'

By Abduljabbar Aburas

TEHRAN (AA) – A meeting between Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his American counterpart Donald Trump is "unimaginable", Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said Tuesday.

"No meeting will be imaginable to be held between presidents of Iran and the U.S. until the U.S. honors its commitments to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action," he told the official IRNA news agency, referring to the 2015 nuclear deal.

Zarif was commenting on a proposal by French President Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Biarritz, France, about the possibility of holding a meeting between the U.S. and Iranian leaders to defuse tension between the two countries.

"What American and French officials say concerns themselves but I told them in Biarritz that no meeting will be held," Zarif said.

He said Iran has clarified that the U.S. administration has violated the 2015 nuclear deal.

"It is now necessary to implement previous agreements about which we have seen no special indication," he said.

Elaborating on Biarritz talks, Zarif said the meeting was aimed at finding ways to preserve the nuclear deal.

"We also negotiated on Europeans' commitments," he added.

The Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was signed in 2015 between Iran and Russia, China, France, the U.K. and the U.S. plus Germany.

Last year, however, Trump unilaterally withdrew from the deal and intensified pressure on Tehran by re-imposing sanctions targeting the country’s energy and banking sectors.

Under the agreement, the world’s major powers promised to lift economic sanctions imposed on Iran in return for Tehran agreeing to limit its nuclear activity to peaceful and civilian purposes.

In June, Iran sharply criticized world powers for not fulfilling their promises and threatened to abandon parts of the deal.