President-elect Ebrahim Raisi said on Monday (June 21) Iran's foreign policy will not be limited by its 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers, holding his first news conference since winning Friday's election.
Raisi, 60, a hardliner and strident critic of the West, will take over from pragmatist Hassan Rouhani in August as Iran seeks to salvage the tattered nuclear deal and be rid of punishing U.S. sanctions that have induced a sharp economic downturn.
"Our people have shown that they resist various pressures and they must know that the foreign policy of our administration does not start with the JCPOA (Iran's 2015 nuclear deal) and will not be limited to it either. We will view interaction with the world as an expansive and balanced interaction in foreign policy," Raisi said in Tehran.
Iranian and Western officials alike say Raisi's rise is unlikely to alter Iran's negotiating stance in talks to revive the nuclear deal - Iran's hardline Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei already has final say on all major policy.
Raisi also said the United States had violated the deal and the European Union had failed to fulfil its commitments, urging the United States to return to its commitment to the deal and all sanctions on Iran to be "lifted and verified by Tehran".
Negotiations have been ongoing in Vienna since April to work out how Iran and the United States can both return to compliance with the nuclear pact, which Washington abandoned in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump and then re-imposed sanctions on Iran.
Iran has subsequently breached the deal's limits on enrichment of uranium, designed to minimize the risk of it developing nuclear weapons potential. Tehran has long denied having any such ambition.