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The same news agency quoted the Iranian interior minister Abdolreza Rahmani as saying: “The United States is not trustworthy. How can we trust this country when it withdraws unilaterally from the nuclear deal?”
Iranian state news agency IRNA cited deputy parliament speaker Ali Motahari as saying that the US pullout from the nuclear accord meant that "negotiation with the Americans would be a humiliation now."
"If Trump had not withdrawn from the nuclear deal and had not imposed sanctions on Iran, there would be no problem with negotiations with America," Motahari added.
Garrett Marquis, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, underlined that the US would not be lifting any sanctions or reestablishing diplomatic and commercial relations until "there are tangible, demonstrated, and sustained shifts in Tehran's policies". "The sting of sanctions will only grow more painful if the regime does not change course," Marquis said.
2.2 US not after regime change in Iran states US defence secretary
US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis on July 27 denied that the Trump administration was pursuing an Iran regime change or collapse policy. "There's none that's been instituted," Mattis said during an off-camera briefing at the Pentagon, as reported by news agencies. The US simply wanted to change Iran’s behaviour, as already stated by other US officials, Mattis reportedly added.
"We need them to change their behaviour on a number of threats that they can pose with their military, with their secret services, with their surrogates, and with their proxies," he said.
Mattis gave the briefing after high-level discussions at the White House that included the issue of Iran.
Last week saw an exchange of threats between Washington and Tehran. Donald Trump addressed an ALL-CAPS warning to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. The tweet followed a weekend during which Rouhani warned Trump about pursuing hostile policies against Tehran, saying: "War with Iran is the mother of all wars."
Senior Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani responded by squaring up to the US president , mocking the threats he has lately made to Iran on Twitter , likening him to a gambler and nightclub owner, deriding the performance of US armed forces in Afghanistan and warning that the Red Sea region was no longer secure for the American military.
Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the 2015 multilateral Iran nuclear deal in May in favour of a policy of using heavy sanctions and other methods to force Iran to the table. He wants to see a renegotiation of several aspects of Iran’s role in the Middle East, including its activities in conflict zones of Syria and Yemen.
6 IRAN Country Report August 2018 www.intellinews.com