TEHRAN, June 18 \u2014 Iran said today that its missile programme would not be part of future negotiations with the United States, after the two sides agreed a framework deal for ending their war.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed a memorandum of understanding early today, ending a regional war that erupted on February 28 with US-Israeli strikes.<\/p>\n
The agreement lays the groundwork for detailed negotiations on Iran\u2019s nuclear programme and sanctions relief for Tehran.<\/p>\n
There is no mention in the deal of Iran\u2019s missile programme, a longstanding concern for Washington and its ally Israel.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur missiles do not like at all to be talked about by anyone,\u201d foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said in an interview with Iranian state television.<\/p>\n
\u201cIranian missiles are only for firing, not for negotiations. Iran\u2019s defence capability will not be discussed in any way, in any process or with any party.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the nearly 40-day war, Iran\u2019s missile infrastructure came under heavy US-Israeli bombardment, but Tehran continued to respond with missile and drone attacks across the region.<\/p>\n
Before the war, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had warned that Iran would need to negotiate over its ballistic missile arsenal, which Washington views as a threat to Israel and US military bases in the region.<\/p>\n
Iran has repeatedly refused to discuss what it describes as its defensive capabilities.<\/p>\n
Yesterday, Trump appeared to soften his position, saying it would be \u201cunfair\u201d for Iran not to have missiles.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m saying that if other countries have them, it\u2019s a little bit unfair for them not to have some,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
\u201cA ballistic missile is not the same thing as what we are talking about when we talk nuclear.\u201d \u2014 AFP<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEHRAN, June 18 \u2014 Iran said today that its missile programme would not be part of future negotiations…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[306,38,34,19659,3620,69,15065],"class_list":["post-166053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tehran","tag-afp","tag-donald-trump","tag-iran","tag-iran-missile-programme","tag-masoud-pezeshkian","tag-tehran","tag-us-iran-negotiations"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116770563850580464","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}