US Must Prove Commitment To JCPOA, Lift Sanctions on Iran - Speaker

By Staff, Agencies

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said instead of setting preconditions for returning to the JCPOA, the administration of US President Joe Biden must first prove its commitment to the nuclear deal by offering a roadmap to the removal of unilateral sanctions imposed on Tehran.

Speaking at an open session of Parliament on Sunday, Qalibaf deplored recent comments by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA], which was signed between Iran and six world powers in July 2015.

Blinken claimed during a news conference that Iran was “out of compliance on a number of fronts” and that “it would take some time, should it make the decision to do so, for it to come back into compliance and time for us then to assess whether it was meeting its obligations.”

“We’re not there yet, to say the least,” Blinken commented.

In reaction to the remarks coming from Washington, Qalibaf said if the White House believes in the deal, it must prove its commitment “in practice” instead of “setting conditions.”

The smart people of Iran, he stated, are not naïve. The experience of the JCPOA does not allow them to enter a game where Iran is pressured to adopt practical measures in return for mere promises, the Iranian official added.

“The new US administration should consider practical ways to remove sanctions and fulfill its legal obligations.”

The JCPOA was initially signed between Iran and the six countries — the United States, Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China — and was held up in the form of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 shortly afterwards.

But in May 2018, Donald Trump, the former US president, ordered unilateral withdrawal of Washington from the accord and reinstated the anti-Iran sanctions that had been lifted by the deal.

Now Biden, who was vice president when the deal was signed during the administration of Barack Obama, said he hopes to get Washington back to the deal.

What his secretary of state recently said seems contradictory to what Biden hoped for.

Iran on January 4 announced the beginning of the process to enrich uranium to 20-percent purity at Fordow in its latest step to reciprocate the American withdrawal and the failure of the European signatories to fulfill their side of the deal.