Iran Press/Iran news: Speaking on Wednesday at the 26th Insurance and Development Conference in Tehran, Hassan Rouhani said that whenever the US lifts sanctions, P5+1 heads can meet with us immediately.
"We have no way except resistance, but we haven't closed negotiation door," he added according to Iran Press.
Rouhani further noted, "We still committed to the agreement. If we have reduced our commitments, that is within the framework of JCPOA. Now they want to negotiate, and most of them are Americans. When I was in New York they were sending messages every day."
"Iran is a country that faces specific risks, and in the past 41 years, we have been under the pressure of sanctions, especially in the last two years," he said.
The President continued, "When the 11th government took office, the country was under sanctions backed by the UN and we were allowed to sell only one million barrels of oil that year, which was decreasing by 20% each year."
Rouhani added, "The first step the government took was to eliminate this 20% drop in oil sales. This means that during the early stages of the negotiations, it was agreed that Iran's oil exports must not decrease as a precondition to continuing the negotiation process."
The President continued, "The second step was that we believed that a higher level of negotiation was needed to resolve this issue, and for the first time after the Revolution, meetings and negotiations between the Iranian Foreign Minister and the US Secretary of State were held in 2013."
Rouhani pointed out, "My advisors and accompanying delegation on the New York visit convinced me that it would be better to take the US President's phone call for negotiations to proceed, and that was something I doubted, but when all the advisors agreed unanimously, I agreed."
"At the last minute I was in New York, the President of the United States contacted me at the hotel and I answered his phone call and it took about 20 minutes, which was a very powerful locomotive for the negotiation train."
Iranian President speaking at the 26th Insurance and Development Conference on December 4 in Tehran
The President noted, "In that telephone conversation, we outlined the framework of the negotiations and the US President raised three issues for negotiation and I said that we were not ready for negotiation on those issues, but if the first issue, which was the nuclear issue, would work well, then the second and third issues can be on the agenda."
Rouhani said, "This led to the Geneva Interim Agreement being reached in less than 100 days, which temporarily lifted sanctions in many areas, including receiving the money the was frozen in American banks by $700 million a month."
The president said that one of the achievements of the Geneva Agreement was that Iran's right to enrichment was recognized, saying, "This was the most significant achievement in the negotiations in less than 100 days. No one, even government advisors, could believe that we could have the 6 major world powers admit Iran has the right to enrichment in its own country, contrary to what was stated in the UN resolutions."
Rouhani also went on to say, "We could reach the final agreement in 2014, but it was postponed until 2015 and this was because of the pressures of the Zionists and Saudi Arabia, for which even the Saudi foreign minister and the Zionist Regimes' prime minister visited Vienna to put off the agreement."
"It was in that postponement that they assured the United States that they would decrease the oil price so much that Iran would be forced to sign anything that the US demands."
Stating that this decreased the price of oil from $104 to around $50 and at some stages to under $30, he continued, "Despite what the enemies of the Iranian nation thought, our country's economic growth rate increased."
He continued, "Saudi Arabia and the Zionist Regime were the key factors in influencing the US to withdraw from the JCPOA and mounting pressures against Iran." 101
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