Iran, MP tears up photo of Mattarella. Vance: Tehran did not accept Trump red lines
The Farnesina announces the summoning of the Iranian ambassador to Italia. On the nuclear issue Tehran says it has reached a "general agreement" with the US
Iranian MP Mojtaba Zarei tore up a sheet on which were printed pictures of various European leaders, including Italy's President Sergio Mattarella. "Khamenei is a great blessing, and his enemies are cursed!" the MP said while speaking in Parliament. In the video footage of his gesture, broadcast by Memri TV, it can be seen that on the torn sheet appear images of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola and Spain's King Philippe VI, among others. "Europe is the home of fascism and Nazism. The corrupt Trump has abandoned Europe, as has the pure and revolutionary Iran," Zarei said.
The reaction of the Farnesina was not long in coming. "An unfortunate thing happened in Tehran, an Iranian MP tore up the photo of President Mattarella, to whom our solidarity goes, and that is why I decided to have the Iranian ambassador summoned for clarification", announced the Foreign Affairs Minister, Antonio Tajani, at a hearing in the Senate Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee on the Board of Peace for Gaza.
The nuclear agreement
Meanwhile, Iran said it had reached a general agreement with the US on the basis of a potential nuclear deal that would lift sanctions against Tehran and reduce the risk of war in the Middle East. "We managed to reach a general agreement on a set of guiding principles, on the basis of which we will proceed from now on and move towards drafting a potential agreement," Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told state television after talks with US special envoy Steve Witkoff in Geneva. Iran is "ready to make it clear that it does not want to acquire a nuclear weapon", Pezeshkian explained in an interview quoted by Afp.
Less optimistic is the US assessment, at least in the words of US Vice-President J.D. Vance, according to whom Iran did not accept ''certain red lines'' that US President Donald Trump had set. Speaking about the Geneva talks between American and Iranian envoys Vanche explained that ''on the one hand, everything went well'', but ''on the other hand, it was very clear that the (American, ed.) president had set some red lines that the Iranians are not yet ready to recognise and resolve''.
Defined guiding principles
"We agreed on a set of guiding principles to start drafting the text of a possible agreement," Araghchi told Iranian state TV at the end of the second round of indirect talks with the US held in Geneva. "Significant progress has been made," he added, "the road ahead is clearer. The drafting will be hard work, but the path has begun. The atmosphere was more constructive than in the previous round'.
