Iran urges France to exercise restraint, avoid hasty, ill-considered positions

Iran has rejected any new negotiations on or changes to the participants of a landmark nuclear deal it clinched with world powers in 2015, advising French President Emmanuel Macron to stop making “hasty and ill-considered positions” vis-à-vis the agreement.

“The JCPOA (the nuclear accord, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), is a multilateral international agreement ratified by [UN] Security Council Resolution 2231, and is in no way open to renegotiation, and parties to it are clear and unchangeable,” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Sa'eed Khatibzadeh said on Saturday.

Khatibzadeh made the remarks in response to the French president who said in an interview with Al Arabiya TV channel on Friday that any new talks with Tehran should include regional countries, including Saudi Arabia.

Iran has reiterated that the JCPOA is a done deal, rejecting any renegotiation or amendments to it. The Islamic Republic also emphasizes that due to its various violations of the deal, it is the United States that must take the first step to prove its commitment to the accord.

As the first step, the US needs to lift the sanctions, Tehran says, stressing that a possible return to the JCPOA without the removal of sanctions would not be acceptable to the Islamic Republic.   

The Iranian spokesperson called on Macron to “exercise restraint and avoid hasty and ill-considered positions.”

Pointing to the US’ unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018, he said, “If there is a desire to revive and maintain the JCPOA, the solution is simple. The US should return to the JCPOA and lift all the JCPOA-related and non-JCPOA-related sanctions imposed by the country’s former President [Donald Trump].”

The deal was initially signed between Iran and six major world states — the US, Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China — in 2015 and was ratified in the form of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 shortly afterwards.

However, the US under former president unilaterally pulled out of the JCPOA in May 2018 and reinstated the anti-Iran sanctions that had been lifted by the deal.

The Trump administration also launched what it called a maximum pressure campaign against Iran, targeting the Iranian nation with the “toughest ever” restrictive measures.

ME