Iran Not The One That Should Return to Nuclear Deal: Official
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Iranian President's Chief of Staff Mahmoud Vaezi, said on Friday that the Islamic Republic is not the side that should return to the 2015 nuclear deal, as it never withdrawn from the accord and has complied with all of its commitments under the agreement.
“We held negotiations once and the dossier of the JCPOA talks has been closed. Our stance on the JCPOA was clear and we have underlined our past stance,” Vaezi told IRNA regarding new US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s claim that Iran should return to the deal first.
He went on to say that one of the demands made by former US President Donald Trump was the reopening of the JCPOA file; but for Iran there is no difference between the Trump and Biden administrations; so, the Iranians’ stance would not change in this respect.
As President Rouhani repeatedly said, only when the US returns to their obligations under the nuclear deal, Iran will abide by its commitments as well.
In a similar stance on Tuesday, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations Majid Takht-Ravanchi, told USA Today that the party that needs to change course is the United States, and not Iran, adding that the Biden administration “must act quickly” before the opportunity to return to the 2015 agreement is no longer an option.
The top Iranian diplomat has indicated that the US needs to take steps now, if it wants to ease relations with Iran, to rejoin the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
The JCPOA was signed in 2015 between Iran and six world states —the US, Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China— and was ratified in the form of Resolution 2231.
However, the US under former president Donald Trump unilaterally pulled his country out of the JCPOA in May 2018 and reinstated the sanctions that had been lifted by the deal.
As the remaining European parties failed to fulfill their end of the bargain and compensate for Washington’s absence, Iran moved in May 2019 to scale back its JCPOA commitments.
