TEHRAN, January 15. /TASS/. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has offered an apology for delaying the admission that the national military was responsible for downing the Ukrainian plane, Iran’s state TV broadcast the speech on Wednesday.
"I would like to offer an apology for the delay and for our tone," the president said.
Rouhani has also dismissed as nonsense the suspicion Iran seeks to go nuclear.
"Rumors to the effect Iran seeks to obtain nuclear weapons are nonsense that has been repeated so many times," Rouhani said on television on Wednesday.
He added that "the steps Iran has taken (to reduce its commitments under the nuclear deal - TASS) are reversible and all of its activities are being carried out under the supervision of the IAEA."
US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin on Monday said, "We will continue to apply economic sanctions until Iran stops terrorist activities and commits to never having nuclear weapons."
The future of the deal over the Iranian nuclear program was called in question after the United States’ unilateral pullout on May 8, 2018 and Washington’s introduction of oil export sanctions on Tehran. Iran argues that all other participants in the nuclear deal, first and foremost, the Europeans, have defaulted on some of their economic obligations, so the agreement in its current shape makes no sense. In this connection Iran started to gradually suspend compliance with its liabilities under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action concerning the enrichment of uranium and research activities. At the beginning of January it declared that this process was completed.