Iran’s president called on President-elect Joe Biden to “make up for past mistakes” and bring the United States back to the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers, a state-run news agency reported on Sunday.
Hassan Rouhani’s comments mark Iran’s highest-level response to Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris who won the November 3 election.
“Now, an opportunity has arisen for the next US administration to make up for past mistakes and return to the path of complying with international agreements through respect for international standards,” the state news agency IRNA was quoted as saying.
Under President Donald Trump, tensions between the United States and Iran have escalated, reaching a fever pitch earlier this year. One of Trump’s most characteristic foreign policy moves was unilaterally withdrawing the United States from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, which had seen Tehran limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Since then, the United States has reimposed punitive sanctions on Iran that have crippled its economy, which was further hit by the coronavirus outbreak. In an effort to pressure Europe to find a way to circumvent sanctions, Iran has slowly abandoned the boundaries of the nuclear deal.
“The people of Iran, despite their heroic resistance against the imposed economic war, demonstrated that the United States’ maximum pressure policy was doomed to failure,” Rouhani said. He added that Iran “views constructive engagement with the world as a strategy.”
Meanwhile, Iran reached its highest single-day death toll from coronavirus on Sunday with 459 new deaths recorded. This brings the total deaths recorded in Iran from the virus to 38,291 nationwide. Another 9,236 new confirmed cases of the virus were confirmed in the past 24 hours, bringing the total confirmed cases to more than 682,000 across the country since February.
Iran has struggled to contain the virus and has seen daily spikes and highs for the past month. The capital, Tehran, has been hit the hardest and recently extended some blockade measures across the city.
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