Mohammad Javad Zarif Quotes

People have been fed misinformation. The fact is that the fighting that is going on on the ground in Syria is with Al Qaeda, with Jabhat al Nusra, with Daesh. The pockets, small pockets, of other groups are usually surrounded by these various extremist groups ... Once they stop fighting, there is nothing for the Syrian government to hit other than the terrorist organizations.

Tehran believes it's none of our business or anybody else's to decide the future of personalities in other countries.

One outcome is almost certain. Extremism stands to benefit enormously from an uncalculated adventure in Iraq,.

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.

If anything caused ISIS, it was the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

So there are two separate tracks. One track is for the Syrian government and the opposition that is interested in a peaceful future of Syria to come together for national unity, for the political process. At the same time, it is a requirement for everybody to stop supporting the extremist groups, to stop allowing them safe passage, to stop allowing them to receive weapons, to stop allowing them to receive financial assistance, and to come together in actually fighting them.

You know where the people who killed people in San Bernardino came from. You know where people who did 9/11 came from. You know where the people who did Paris came from, where they transited, where they went. None of them even set foot in Iran. So why are you punishing people who are visiting Iran for that? ... We're not going to radicalize them. We never have. Your allies have radicalized people who visited.

You cannot have security at the expense of the insecurity of others

We call upon the nuclear-weapon states to immediately cease their plans to further invest in modernizing and extending the life span of their nuclear weapons and related facilities.

The United States wanted to send its trained rebel groups to Syria to fight ISIS. Out of twenty-five hundred rebels they had trained, only seventy accepted to go to Syria to fight ISIS. Everybody else wanted to go to Syria to fight the government. So you've got to wake up and smell the coffee ... The rebel groups have not fired a shot against ISIS.

It is important for everybody to insure that the process will go on, that the ceasefire will hold. Of course, there is no ceasefire against Daesh [the Islamic State], Jabhat al Nusra, and Al Qaeda.

We've never declared war on anybody. We [Iran] defended ourselves against wars that were imposed on us. We have no desire to engage in confrontation with anybody.

Wake up to the real world. Look at what's happening in the region. Look at where people are going, how people react to humiliation and marginalization. I do not think a few more votes is worth making this menace - that we all face - far more complicated. People have to wake up to that and respond to that, not politicize it.