Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has made a rare public admission of error, saying he made a mistake in allowing Iran's foreign minister to speak with top U.S. officials in the negotiations that led to the 2015 international nuclear agreement.
The pact lifted international sanctions on Iran, but the expected level of foreign investment to help revive the economy never materialized. In May, U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of the agreement and is now reimposing U.S. sanctions in stages.
Khamenei, Iran's highest authority, rarely admits to making errors but said he had done just that over the nuclear talks.
"With the issue of the nuclear negotiations, I made a mistake in permitting our foreign minister to speak with them. It was a loss for us," he said in comments tweeted on Wednesday by Khat-e Hezbollah, a weekly newspaper affiliated with his official website.
Khamenei made the remarks on Monday, but the newspaper said it was quoting them due to inaccurate accounts published by other media.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif negotiated the nuclear deal with counterparts from six powers, including then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. Under the deal, Iran undertook to curb its nuclear program in return for relief from the international sanctions that were throttling its economy.
New U.S. sanctions against Iran took effect last week, and Trump said companies doing business with Iran would be barred from the United States. The U.S. had said Iran's only chance of avoiding the sanctions would be to accept an offer by Trump to negotiate a tougher nuclear deal.
Iranian officials from Khamenei down have rejected the offer. Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri said on Wednesday that the United States is trying to make Iran surrender through the imposition of sanctions.
"The first priority for all of us under a sanctions situation is to work toward managing the country in a way that brings the least amount of damage to people's lives," Fars News quoted Jahangiri as saying. "America is trying by applying various pressures on our society to force us to retreat and surrender."
The new sanctions target Iranian purchases of U.S. dollars, metals trading, coal, industrial software, and the auto sector, though the toughest measures, targeting oil exports, do not take effect for four more months.
Few U.S. companies do much business in Iran so the impact of sanctions mainly stems from the ability to block European and Asian firms from trading there.
President Hassan Rouhani made similar comments to Jahangiri, although he did not specifically refer to the United States.
"We will not let the enemy bring us to our knees," Rouhani said, according to state TV.
"America itself took actions which destroyed the conditions for negotiation. There were conditions for negotiation and we were negotiating. They destroyed the bridge themselves. If you're telling the truth then come now and build the bridge again," he said.
The Iranian economy is beset by high unemployment and the rial currency has lost half its value since April. The reimposition of sanctions could worsen the economic situation.
Rouhani said the economy is the biggest problem facing Iran.
On Monday, Khamenei accused the Iranian government of economic mismanagement in the face of the reimposed sanctions.
Thousands of Iranians have protested in recent weeks against sharp price rises of some foods, a lack of jobs and state corruption. The protests over the cost of living have often turned into anti-government rallies.
