Iran's president says U.S., Israeli attacks inflicted 'grievous blow' on international trust

UNITED NATIONS — Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian took the stage at the U.N. on Wednesday to blast Israeli and U.S. attacks in June as inflicting “a grievous blow upon international trust and the very prospect of peace in the region.”

His comments at the General Assembly are the first time he has spoken in a global forum since the 12-day Israel-Iran war over the summer that saw the assassination of many of the Islamic Republic’s highest military and political leaders.

Pezeshkian is in New York as a series of crippling U.N. sanctions loom over Tehran if it does not make a deal with European leaders by Saturday. But before even landing in New York, any diplomatic efforts by Pezeshkian and Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi were overshadowed when the country’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei rejected any direct nuclear talks with the United States.

Pezeshkian also repeated Tehran’s claims that it odes not seek a nuclear weapon through its domestic nuclear activities.

“I hereby declare once before this assembly that Iran has never and will never seek to build a nuclear bomb,” he said.

The president also criticized the Britain, German and France’s efforts to trigger the so-called “snapback” mechanism to reinstate sanctions — barring a last-minute accord — over Iran’s failure to comply with conditions of a 2015 nuclear deal aimed at preventing Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.

He said that the countries — known as the E3 — have operated in “bad faith” for years to dictate Iranian compliance with a deal that the U.S. abandoned in 2018. “They falsely presented themselves as parties of good standing to the agreement and they disparaged Iran’s sincere efforts as insufficient.