Zarif: JCPOA still diplomatic triumph despite US withdrawal

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said a historic nuclear agreement Tehran signed with the P5+1 group of countries in 2015 is still a “triumph of multilateral diplomacy” even after the US pullout from the agreement.

Zarif made the remarks in a post on his of¿cial Twitter account on Saturday on the occasion of the third anniversary of the conclusion of the nuclear deal, of¿cially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

President Donald Trump announced on May 8 that Washington was walking away from the nuclear agreement and that he planned to reinstate US nuclear sanctions on Iran and impose “the highest level” of economic bans on the Islamic Republic.

Under the JCPOA, Iran undertook to put limits on its nuclear program in exchange for the removal of nuclear-related sanctions imposed against Tehran.

Since the US president pulled Washington out of the nuclear deal, European countries have been scrambling to ensure that Iran gets enough economic bene¿ts to persuade it to stay in the deal. The remaining parties have vowed to stay in the accord.

Zarif, one of the architects of the nuclear pact, criticized unilateral actions by Trump’s administration.

“While we knew US can’t be trusted to keep its word — as its allies have now discovered — JCPOA proves that toxic unilateralism of Trump Admin means it can’t be relied on to honor any deal,” the top Iranian diplomat pointed out.

Addressing reporters in the Austrian capital Vienna on July 6 following a meeting with his counterparts from Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia for the ¿rst time since the US withdrawal, the Iranian foreign minister said that all the remaining signatories to the 2015 nuclear agreement had political will to stand up to the US move to withdraw from the deal.

However, he warned that if the European sides failed to properly ful¿ll their commitments, Iran would take its own measures to counter the US withdrawal from the JCPOA.