‘US's Iran problem not related to nuclear deal’

As the US administration has stepped up its rhetoric against Iran’s nuclear deal dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has warned that Tehran will stand on its "honorable and dignified positions" regarding its nuclear accord and shall deliver the due response to any wrong move. Press TV has asked Pye Ian, an independent political and economic researcher from Los Angeles, and Michael Lane, founder of American Institute for Foreign Policy from Washington, to give their assessments of the disputes over the nuclear agreement.

Pye Ian is of the opinion that the root cause of US differences with Iran has nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear activities, but that Americans and their allies see Tehran as an impediment to their intervention in the Middle East and are therefore eager to use every possible tool to strike a blow to the Islamic Republic.

The US, the UK, Israel and Saudi Arabia are opposed to the JCPOA, because “they cannot capture Syria or Lebanon without Iran being out of the way and cannot block further Euro-Asian integration with China; Russia and the pan-Asian and European partners all investing further in and with Iran,” the analyst said on Sunday night.

The American-led bloc is annoyed with Iran’s support for the Syrian government, which is under foreign pressure to relinquish power to make room for US puppet governments in the Arab country, he argued.

Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China – plus Germany signed the nuclear agreement on July 14, 2015 and started implementing it on January 16, 2016. Under the deal, Iran undertook to put limitations on its nuclear program in exchange for the removal of nuclear-related sanctions imposed against Tehran.

According to Ian, the disagreement with the nuclear deal is “not about the JCPOA but about the ... desire for regime change in Iran in the eyes of the US, Israel, the UK and Saudi Arabia.”

The United States’ attempt to walk away from the nuclear agreement unilaterally without any justification means that Washington considers itself above international law and agreements of all kind, in the same manner that Hitler did some 80 years ago, he noted.

Meanwhile, Michael Lane said US President Donald Trump thinks his predecessor Barack Obama made a “horrendous mistake” when he designed his foreign policy towards Iran.

Trump is of the opinion that it is wrong to extract the nuclear issue from the whole aspects of disputes between Iran and the US, Lane said.

“In the United States, it (JCPOA) was not an international agreement; it was an Obama agreement,” because president Obama never did submit the agreement to the Senate for ratification, and such a deal “can be negated” by any subsequent president or even by president Obama himself, Lane said.

In March 2017, the European Union's foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini stressed that the historic nuclear deal with Iran is an international agreement endorsed by the United Nations, underlining that renegotiation of the treaty is not possible.

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EU foreign policy chief has ruled out the possibility of renegotiating Iran’s nuclear deal with the P5+1 group of countries.

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