Iran Stresses Equal Commitment to JCPOA
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – All parties to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal must fulfill their commitments equally, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said, recommending a review of the deal and the basics of law to those who are pressing Iran to carry out its JCPOA commitments unilaterally but refuse to meet theirs.
In a statement on Wednesday, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Mousavi deplored comments by German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas who has urged Tehran to stick to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Speaking in Stockholm on Tuesday, Maas claimed that without the nuclear deal, “one can no longer assume with certainty that Iran won't resume developing a nuclear weapon.”
The German diplomat also warned that a collapse of the JCPOA would serve the interests of neither Europe nor Iran, adding, “If Iran were to withdraw from this agreement, it would go into international isolation; it would be back where it was before the agreement, including all the sanctions… That cannot be in Iran’s interest.”
In reaction, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said, “We agree with his (Maas’) remarks about the significance of the JCPOA for the international community and Europe, but we don’t quite understand his emphasis on unilateral implementation of commitments by Iran under a multilateral agreement.”
“If this agreement (the JCPOA) has multiple parties, then all of them must honor their commitments equally, and if they can’t, then they must understand that we can also review the JCPOA and our undertakings with the mechanisms that the JCPOA has entitled us to,” Mousavi underlined.
He also recommended that the European parties who express concern about the fate of the JCPOA ask all sides to honor the deal and meet their commitments.
“I suggest that he (Maas) and others who express concern about Iran’s recent JCPOA decisions that they should study Article 36 of the JCPOA and the basics of the law once again carefully,” the spokesman concluded.
Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, US, Britain, France, and Germany) on July 14, 2015, reached a conclusion over the text of the 2015 nuclear deal.
The accord took effect in January 2016 and was supposed to terminate all nuclear-related sanctions against Iran all at once, but its implementation was hampered by the US policies and its eventual withdrawal from the deal.
On May 8, 2018, US President Donald Trump pulled his country out of the nuclear accord.
Following the US withdrawal, Iran and the remaining parties launched talks to save the accord.
However, the EU’s failure of ensure Iran’s economic interests forced Tehran to stop honoring certain commitments under JCPOA in May 2019.
