Iran rejects Europe’s push to halt nuclear program, calls negotiations "irrelevant"

Iran will regard negotiations with European countries as meaningless if they continue to demand that Tehran abandon its fundamental right to develop a peaceful nuclear program, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned.

Araghchi made the remarks in a post on X, reacting to recent statements by European Commission President Kaja Kallas, who called for the swift resumption of negotiations aimed at the “termination” of Iran’s nuclear program.

“If the Coordinator of the JCPOA Joint Commission believes that the objective of any potential negotiation is 'ending Iran’s nuclear program', it means that the participation and role of the European Union and its member states, plus UK, in any future negotiation would be irrelevant and therefore meaningless,” Araghchi wrote.

The Iranian diplomat criticized Kallas’s approach, saying her comments suggest she no longer attaches importance to either the provisions of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)—which guarantees all signatory countries the right to develop peaceful nuclear energy—or to the original nuclear agreement and the related UN Security Council Resolution 2231.

The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed by Iran, the United Kingdom, Germany, China, Russia, the United States, and France, ending a crisis that began in 2002 when Western nations accused Tehran of secretly developing nuclear weapons.

However, in 2018, then-US President Donald Trump announced Washington’s withdrawal from the agreement and reimposed all American sanctions against Iran. In response, in 2020, the Islamic Republic declared it would scale back its JCPOA commitments and restricted access for International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to its nuclear facilities.

On July 1, 2025, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian announced the suspension of his country’s cooperation with the IAEA.

By Tamilla Hasanova