Iran Negotiations Quotes

Europeans should pay more attention. Iran has called for dialogue and is moving in the direction of reaching an agreement through peaceful means.

After months of negotiations, Iran has finally agreed to reduce its nuclear weapons program. Which was great until Putin showed up and said, 'Hi, I'm here about Craigslist ad for nukes.'

We're [Iran] not dismantling anything. We are uninstalling some centrifuges and reconstructing the Arak reactor, modernizing it. . . . The remaining activities that we need undertake will not take more than several days, less than two weeks.

I believe in diplomacy; I don't believe in talking to... that talking to Iran somehow constitutes a concession or a favour.

Iran's strong logic and firm diplomacy is the guideline for all government officials in negotiations on country's peaceful nuclear program with foreigners, quite resolutely.

The bad news is that Iran wants to talk about everything except their nuclear program. They want to talk about regional cooperation, they want to talk about the sanctions issues, and it seems like the western powers want to talk about nothing more than the nuclear issue.

The fact that there were discreet channels of communication established with Iran in 2012 is something that we confirmed publicly. However, we did not have any serious prospect of reaching a nuclear deal until after the election of Hassan Rouhani in 2013. Yes, we had discussions with the Iranians before that, but they did not get anywhere.

With Iran, we negotiated privately in 2012-2013 from a position of strength, not a position of weakness. The secret negotiations in Oman. This ultimately led to the Joint Plan of Action of November 2013.

I did put together the coalition to impose sanctions. I actually started the negotiations that led to the nuclear agreement, sending some much my closest aides to begin the conversations with the Iranians.

It is in the U.S. interest to engage Iran in serious negotiations - on both regional security and the nuclear challenge it poses.

I spoke on the phone with President Rouhani of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The two of us discussed our ongoing efforts to reach an agreement over Iran's nuclear program. While there will surely be important obstacles to moving forward and success is by no means guaranteed, I believe we can reach a comprehensive solution.

It is longstanding U.S. policy that we will talk to the Iranians anytime, anywhere, on any subject, with no preconditions. So far, they have not taken us up on our offer.

My expectation would be that if we can begin discussions soon, shortly after the Iranian elections, we should have a fairly good sense by the end of the year as to whether they are moving in the right direction.