JCPOA ‘Delivering’, EU’s Mogherini Says
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini dismissed Washington’s view that the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers should be renegotiated, saying that the agreement is “delivering”.
“There is no need to renegotiate parts of the agreement because the agreement is concerning a nuclear program and as such is delivering,” Mogherini told reporters on Wednesday, following a UN meeting of the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) that negotiated the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive plan of Action (JCPOA), with Iran.
“We have all agreed that all sides are implementing so far the agreement,” she added.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson joined Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif for a first meeting with partners backing the JCPOA.
US President Donald Trump has threatened to scrap the deal unless it is re-opened for negotiations. On Wednesday, Trump told reporters that he had reached a decision, but did not elaborate.
Trump is due to report to the US Congress by October 15 on whether he can certify that Iran is upholding its side of the accord, under which it accepted limits on its nuclear programme.
In his address to the UN General Assembly, the president on Tuesday called the nuclear deal “an embarrassment” for the United States and Tillerson later confirmed that the agreement must be “revisited.”
But Mogherini, who chaired the meeting, argued that it would be unwise to re-open the deal at a time when the world is facing a nuclear threat from North Korea.
“We already have one potential nuclear crisis. We definitely do not need to go into another one,” she said.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told the UN General Assembly earlier that the nuclear deal was endorsed by the UN Security Council and its fate could not be decided by “one or two countries.”