Iran will remain in deal with conditions

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday that his country will remain in the Iran nuclear deal, on condition that the pact serves Iran’s interests.

The president said that Iran “hopes with all the lawabiding and multilateral-oriented countries that we can ultimately put this behind us in an easier fashion than was earlier anticipated”.

“Remaining members of the deal have taken very good steps forward but Iran has higher expectations,” he said. “Should the situation change, we have other paths and other solutions that we can embark upon.”

The Iran nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was reached in 2015 to restrict Iran’s nuclear-related actions. But the United States withdrew from the deal in May.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the pact, which has been endorsed unanimously by the council, is “a hard-won achievement of multilateralism” when speaking at the United Nations Security Council meeting.

He said China encourages Iran to continue to fulfill the commitments it has made, “while the legitimate rights of all countries to normal economic and trade cooperation with Iran should also be respected”.

Leaders of France and Britain also vowed to defend the deal.

Foreign ministers from the remaining members — China, Britain, France, Russia and Germany — and Iran as well as the European Union said in a joint statement on Monday that a newly established “Special Purpose Vehicle” will help to facilitate payments for Iranian imports and exports including oil.

Rouhani said that all these showed that Washington, by exiting the deal and sanctioning Iran, has isolated itself.

“The United States of America one day, sooner or later, will come back. This cannot be continued,” Rouhani said. “We are not isolated; America is isolated.”

A day before, US President Donald Trump lashed out at Iran and the nuclear deal, asking “all nations to isolate Iran’s regime as long as its aggression continues” when delivering his speech to the UN General Assembly.

‘US-compliant’

Zhang Zhixin, an associate researcher at China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said Trump’s calling shows that the US may force the parties concerned to reach a “more US-compliant” agreement through some “extreme pressure”, and the Iranian nuclear issue may be revived again.

Trump said on Wednesday that the US will impose “tougher than ever” sanctions on Iran after the punitive actions against the country slated for November, which Rouhani called “illegal” and “nothing new”.

Fan Jishe, a researcher from Institute of American Studies at Chinese Academy of Social Science, worried that the destruction of the Iranian agreement may have a negative impact on global nuclear security and nonproliferation and cooperation among the world’s major powers.

“I hope the international community can defend the nuclear deal,” he said. Xinhua, AP and Hong Xiao at the United Nations contributed to this story.