US ‘Violent’ Unilateralism Destroys Global Order - Zarif

By Staff, Agencies

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the “violent unilateralism” relentlessly pursued by the United States has posed a serious threat to the international system and other countries.

“We believe that the United States is pushing a new sort of violent unilateralism, an extremist unilateralism, which destroys all the foundations of global order,” Iran’s top diplomat told China's state-run Xinhua news agency during an interview in China published on Friday.

Zarif’s comment came in response to a question whether he agreed with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi that the Iran 2015 nuclear deal - officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA] – is in fact a contest between unilateralism and multilateralism.

Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – the US, France, Britain, Russia and China – plus Germany signed the JCPOA on July 2015 and started implementing it on January 16, 2016.

Under the landmark accord, Iran undertook to put limits on its nuclear program in exchange for the removal of nuclear-related sanctions.

However, US President Donald Trump pulled his country out of JCPOA in May last year and launched the “maximum pressure” against the Islamic Republic, re-imposing the sanctions it had lifted under the agreement.

Elaborating on the reasons why the US sticks to unilateralism and the best way to counter it, Zarif noted, “Multilateralism is the best counter-measure against unilateral tendencies by the United States.”

He also said that the US and particularly the administration of Trump “strongly believes in the use of coercive measures”, which “usually threaten the lives of ordinary citizens,” and “that is why Iran and China rightly called these actions by the United States economic terrorism.”

Zarif also insisted that “dialogue and working for the common good and common destiny” were the best ways to deal with the “very negative tendencies” promoted by Washington.