Mohammad Javad Zarif Quotes

Ultimately, the goal of sanctions is to ratchet up the economic pressure on the Iranians to such a level that the regime determines it is simply too great to bear, and they are forced to weigh the decision to carry on their nuclear development and their illicit quest for nuclear weapons against the ever-growing pressure from their own people.

If India builds the bomb we will eat grass or leaves, we will go hungry. But we will get one of our own.

China, North Korea's last ally in the world has just voted agaisnt them [in the United Nations]. What would you do if you thought every country in the world was against you and you wanted to survive? You would buy insurance. And the best insurance you could get to prevent invasion would be nuclear weapons, and that is just what North Korea has done. So now, when the President [Trump] threatens them, what do they do? They go out and buymore insurance.

After a decade in public life working to stop Iran from ever acquiring nuclear weapons, I cannot support a deal giving Iran billions of dollars in sanctions relief - in return for letting it maintain an advanced nuclear program and the infrastructure of a threshold nuclear state.

The international community is unwilling to accept the policies of the Iranian regime.

Iran is isolating itself from the rest of the world.

Sanctions aren't about weapons of mass destruction. People need to understand that.

Sanctions are not really an economic weapon.

It is clear that the original idea of the Iranians [to produce nuclear weapons] has been stopped by this agreement.

Don’t think of it as helping their economy; think of it as burning their fields.

There is no secret; and there is no defense. Within some few years Russia and many smaller countries can have their installations ready to make atom bombs by the hundreds, just like America, Atom bombs are the cheapest means of town-destruction …. Russia has numbers of devoted agents in every country--they can easily be smuggled in and hidden, to destroy everything for miles around at the fixed moment. An immense army of security officers and spies will be needed, continually to inspect every box or case in any house.

Unilateral sanctions only make foreign rivals stronger and taint us as unreliable suppliers.

A stable world may be one in which the United States can act to secure peace without fear of a nuclear attack.

Should the Iranian nation beg for the right of exploitation of nuclear energy from the bullying world powers until they accept that the nation has a nuclear right?...No. This is not the way of a free and independent nation.

We believe US threats of an approaching World War III and their use of Iran's nuclear issue as an excuse is another form of American insanity.

We want to give them more than a choice between capitulation and strangulation.

We can not allow a terrorist state to become a nuclear power.

Today we are rightly in an era of disarmament and dismantlement of nuclear weapons. But in some countries nuclear weapons development still continues. Whether and when the various Nations of the World can agree to stop this is uncertain. But individual scientists can still influence this process by withholding their skills., Accordingly, I call on all scientists in all countries to cease and desist from work creating, developing, improving and manufacturing further nuclear weapons - and, for that matter, other weapons of potential mass destruction such as chemical and biological weapons..

Among the many reasons why it’s a bad idea to try and contain a nuclear Iran is that containment entails two things most Americans don’t like: long term effort and high cost

Sanctions will not produce capitulation.

Nothing can be done about a rogue state unless the great powers stand together … There may be other things that the great powers can compete over, but not over dealing with rogue states and their methods of mass destruction.

Russia's actions in Syria are not the only reasons to distrust Mr. Putin. Moscow has opposed attempts by the U.N. in November 2011 to increase sanctions against Iran for its illicit nuclear program.

If we can deter the Soviet Union, if we can deter North Korea, why on earth can't we deter Iran?

Politicians often call for sanctions as a way of sounding tough when they don't want to take riskier measures.

We should not approve an agreement that fails to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons and does nothing to address Iranian behavior that threatens our allies and our interests.