Nuclear Deal: Iran Foreign Min hopes “common sense prevails in EU”

Tehran, Apr 13: The European Union has little time left to save the nuclear deal with Iran, it should make some gestures of goodwill, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Tuesday, commenting on the new sanctions.

“The EU has very little time left to return to compliance with its obligations under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA]. On the other hand, if this opportunity is lost, trouble will come. Therefore, I hope that common sense will prevail in the EU … They must return to gestures of goodwill, to gestures aimed at protecting human rights … They must think about their image, the EU must know that they are not ‘the moral top’,” Zarif said at a press conference, held after negotiations with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also noted that the nuclear talks participants probably did not have nine months to agree on the deal.

“I have listed US laws that aim at imposing a huge number of sanctions against Iran, but Iran also has a parliament, and the Iranian parliament passed a strategic measures law, which has its own time frame,” Lavrov said, adding this framework is taken into account in the nuclear talks currently being held in Vienna.

Another reason why the JCPOA participants are running out of time is that there are actors “engaged in known provocations” who are seeking to derail and bury the deal, the diplomat said.

“I hope that common sense will prevail after all. Especially I hope that our European colleagues are aware of their responsibility for the fate of the JCPOA and will not be led by those who want to destroy and bury this agreement,” Lavrov concluded.

Last week, the joint commission on the Iran nuclear deal resumed in-person meetings in Vienna. The first meeting on April 6 resulted in forming two expert-level working groups to deal with lifting US sanctions against Iran and with nuclear issues. The groups were tasked with working out specific steps that would help Tehran and Washington revive the accord, abandoned by the US administration of previous President Donald Trump in 2018 in a move that forced Iran to terminate its nuclear commitments.

(UNI)