A senior Iranian Foreign Ministry official said the Iran’s nuclear deal with the P5+1 group, known as JCPOA, proved to be a success story, but only for the P5+1. He made the remarks in sideline of the Tehran Security Conference on Monday. More than 200 Iranian and international political figures and analysts attended the one-day event.
“Iran has fully lived up to its commitments regarding the deal as it has been repeatedly, 10 times, confirmed by the IAEA. However, Iran and the Iranian people would not remember the deal as a success story as the other side of the agreement has not fully honored its obligations. As a matter of fact, Iran has not benefited from easing of the sanctions,” he said during a meeting with a number of European politicians, according to Iran’s View Mojtaba Mousavi.
Trump must decide by January 12 whether to extend sanctions waivers. “What will happens if President Trump does not waive the sanctions and go out of the deal?” the official asked. “What I can tell you is that we have all received our instructions. The Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO) is fully prepared to speed up our nuclear program and we have also our instructions to go and activate the mechanism in the JCPOA to deal with this non-compliance of the deal by the US.”
Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization chief had earlier warned that the country would reconsider its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) if the US fails to implement its commitments as per the nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers.
Speaking in a telephone conversation with IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano on Monday, Ali Akbar Salehi warned about the consequences of Washington’s possible withdrawal from the JCPOA.
Iran Not Convinced Europe Will Take Its Side after US Withdrawal
“It is the time for Trump to re-certify Iran’s compliance with the JCPOA and extend the waivers. If he refuses to do that, it means the end of JCPOA for the US. But is this the end of the deal for Iran and other parties as well? To be honest, it depends on the Europeans’ reaction,” the senior Iranian official added.
“Europeans must convince Iran that they can deliver on their JCPOA commitments without the US. It’s certainly a very big question. To be frank, however, we are not convinced that Europeans would do that. We are not convinced that Europeans can support their own companies against the US and encourage them to work with Iran in case the US sanctions are back.”
“Europeans have so far failed to convince Iran that they can maintain the deal without the US,” he went on to say.
“Actually Europeans played a very good role in past two or three months to prevent the US Congress from doing anything wrong regarding the JCPOA but I’m not sure they can do the same with President Trump himself.”
It seems that Iranian administration has concluded that the US is determined to exit from the nuclear deal. Iranian political circles are still discussing the best way to react to the failure of the JCPOA and some senior politicians believe that Iran’s reaction should be independent from the EU reaction to the US.
“If the US exit from the deal, Iran must leave the deal. We can’t again rely on the Europeans weak promises, we should put an end to this sequence of damages as soon as US kills the nuclear deal,” says Hossein Lotfi, a conservative political activist.
