Araqchi: It would be wrong to give concessions to Trump over JCPOA
Iran’s deputy foreign minister described some Europeans’ policy to give concessions to the US president in order to keep him in the nuclear deal as “wrong,” saying that the policy would backfire, IRNA reported.
“Some Europeans believe that if they give Trump some concessions in areas other than the JCPOA, they will be able to keep him in the agreement. This is a completely wrong policy and will definitely backfire. We have frankly said this to Europe,” Abbas Araqchi said in an interview with an Iranian radio program on Monday.
He further said that European countries know that they will lose their credibility with the international community if they scrap the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
The Iranian official said the US president has been trying to destroy the JCPOA.
“In the first step, they wanted to make the situation tough for Iran to make it withdraw from the JCPOA, and then they threw the ball into the US Congress’ court, but to no avail,” Araqchi noted.
“Over the past year, European countries have been supporting the JCPOA, and have stood by Iran and against the US,” he emphasized, adding that such an extent of differences between Europe and the United States has been unprecedented.
“In the UN Security Council, Trump put pressure on Iran, both over the nuclear issue and the recent chaos and unrest [in Iran] but he failed [to achieve his goals] again,” Araqchi noted, predicting that Iran will definitely face new challenges in the coming months.