Rouhani says Iran doesn’t want war with United States

Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday his country doesn’t want a war with the United States and believes America will “sooner or later” support the Iran nuclear agreement again after the Trump administration’s withdrawal.

Rouhani told a wide-ranging news conference that the U.S. decision to pull out of the 2015 nuclear deal in May was “a mistake” because there are no benefits for the people of the United States, Iran, Europe or any other country.

“The United States of America one day will come back, sooner or later,” he said.

He said the Trump administration made a “second mistake” in holding a meeting of the U.N. Security Council earlier Wednesday during which 14 countries either directly or indirectly backed the nuclear agreement between Iran, the U.S. and five other major powers.

Only U.S. President Donald Trump, who chaired the session, spoke against the deal known as the JCPOA and appeared isolated as a result, Rouhani said.

Addressing the council, Trump called the JCPOA a “horrible one-sided deal,” declaring that Iran “must never be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon” and accusing its government of exporting “violence, terror and turmoil.”

Rouhani said it was “quite strange, unprecedented and amazing” that while presiding over the Security Council as its president, Trump also called on the 14 other council members to violate the legally binding resolution endorsing the JCPOA that the council adopted unanimously in 2015.