Iran’s FM Sends Letters to UN Chief, EU’s Mogherini on JCPOA
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said he has sent separate letters to secretary-general of the United Nations and the European Union foreign policy chief about future of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the US breach of the nuclear deal.
Speaking to reporters at the conclusion of a short trip to Moscow on Monday, Zarif said he has sent the letters on May 10, two days after the US president pulled his country out of the JCPOA, a nuclear agreement now including Iran and the Group 4+1 (Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany).
The letter to UN chief Antonio Guterres will be published today, Zarif added, describing it as a letter at the level of the UN General Assembly and the Security Council that should be registered as a UN document.
The letters relate to the US violation of the JCPOA, he explained, noting that the letter to EU’s Federica Mogherini has called for a meeting of the JCPOA joint commission.
Normally, the JCPOA joint commission meetings begin with a session of political directors, followed by a ministerial meeting if necessary, Zarif added, but noted that such process has now changed as the US withdrew from the deal.
He finally noted that his tour of China, Russia and Belgium is aimed at gaining “general guarantees” which would be later worked upon by the experts.
Zarif arrived in Moscow on Monday after visiting China as part of a tight diplomatic tour for talks on the JCPOA. He will later go to Brussels for talks with the European parties to the JCPOA on the possibility of preserving the accord in a way that the Iranian nation’s interests are guaranteed.
In a speech from the White House on May 8, US President Donald Trump pulled his country out of the nuclear deal, which was achieved in Vienna in 2015 after around two years of negotiations.
On May 9, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei urged that any decision to keep the deal running without the US should be conditional on “practical guarantees” from the three European parties to the JCPOA.
