Iran still faithful to all its JCPOA obligations, envoy tells IAEA

Iran has told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it is still faithful to the terms of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, and has not breached any of its commitments under the multilateral accord.

“Iran has shown its good will by implementing all of its commitments under the deal wholeheartedly, and as the world witnessed, the Agency has continuously reported the full compliance of Iran with the JCPOA,” said Kazem Gharibabadi, the Iranian envoy to the IAEA.

“Iran tries to protect its national interest in accordance with international rules, regulations and negotiated agreements, and even the recent steps taken by Iran to cease the implementation of some of its commitments under the JCPOA not only are the continuation of its full compliance with the provisions of the deal consistent with its paragraph 36, but also do not break any of its international obligations, and Iran still is acting within the nuclear deal,” he added.

“However, if it [Iran] is to be the only, and I stress, the only participant who bears the burden and implements the deal unilaterally, such a lopsided implementation, naturally, would not last long, and gradual cessation of implementation of commitments would be the first step for Iran to take to bring back the lost balance in the deal,” he warned.

He made the remarks in a statement on Thursday before the IAEA Board of Governors which met on Verification and Monitoring of Iran in Light of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231 passed in 2015.

During the meeting, IAEA Acting Director-General Cornel Feruta claimed the Agency has "detected natural uranium particles of anthropogenic origin at a location in Iran not declared to the agency” and said the issue has remained “unresolved”.

“A meeting between the Agency and Iran is scheduled next week in Tehran to discuss the matter,” he said.

Read more:

• Iran, IAEA officials to meet in Tehran next week

‘Europe not ready to pay necessary price’

In his Thursday remarks, Gharibabadi referred to the European partners’ failure to maintain the inherent balance in the deal following the US withdrawal, and said they “are not ready to pay the necessary price for the sake of maintaining the most significant achievement of diplomacy and the cornerstone of non-proliferation architecture, as they say.”

He also rejected statements by the US representative to the IAEA on Washington's readiness to negotiate with Iran as a political gimmick in order to shirk its responsibilities for noncompliance with its international obligations.

"If the US is serious about entering into negotiations, it should, first, remove all re-imposed sanctions, so that the ground would be leveled. Only then, negotiations could be followed under the framework of the JCPOA Joint Commission."

"Continuation of the imposition of sanctions and other unilateral coercive measures are not consistent and coherent with their claims for negotiations," said Gharibabadi.

The nuclear deal was reached in Vienna in July 2015 between Iran and the P5+1 group of states, the US, Britain, France, Russia, and China plus Germany. It lifted nuclear-related sanctions against Tehran, which, in turn, voluntarily changed some aspects of its nuclear energy program.

The US, however, left the accord last May and reinstated its unilateral sanctions against Iran. The European deal partners, meanwhile, have bowed to Washington’s pressure, failing to honor their contractual obligations to protect Iran’s economy in the face of America’s “toughest-ever” bans.

In reaction to Washington's withdrawal from the deal and Europe’s inaction, Tehran has reduced its commitments under the JCPOA in four phases, the latest of which was the resumption of enrichment at Fordow nuclear facility.

The fourth step, the injection of uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas into centrifuges at Fordow, is believed to be the most important step so far, and a serious warning to other parties.

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