US breaches JCPOA, UNSC resolution, has no right to vilify Iran: Zarif

Iranian foreign minister says the United States has no right to “abuse” the UN and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to vilify Iran, because Washington has already breached the nuclear deal that Tehran clinched with world powers, including the US, and the United Nations Security Council resolution that endorsed the deal.

In a tweet on Thursday, Mohammad Javad Zarif noted that despite Iran’s effort to abide by its obligations as per the nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Washington has been doing its best to heighten tensions with Tehran and has also been bullying other countries to follow suit.

Zarif’s tweet, though, refuted Washington’s claim by invoking a 50-year-old international legal opinion.

Under the 1971 International Court of Justice opinion adduced in the tweet, “a party which disowns or does not fulfill its own obligations cannot be recognized as retaining the rights, which it claims to derive from the relationship,” the top diplomat reminded. The opinion has described the code as a fundamental principle governing international relationships.

Russia recently attacked the US efforts to come in the way of Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA, although, the nuclear agency has not yet found any evidence of “diversion” of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear work.

Earlier this week, Russia's Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov said the nuclear deal’s “opponents” -- in clear reference to the United States and some of its allies -- were seeking to "undermine the confidence and cooperation” between Tehran and the IAEA.

He reminded that the nuclear accord was, among other things, clenched to "restore confidence in exclusively peaceful nature" of Iran's nuclear program, noting that the nuclear agency has not found any “military dimension” to Iran’s nuclear activities.

Zarif, meanwhile, gave a list of the United States other actions, which stand in sharp contrast to the international law, saying the US has clearly admitted to involvement in such acts of terrorism as assassination of the regional resistance movement’s top figures in Iraq, as well as facilitating Saudi and Israeli regime’s war crimes in Yemen and Palestine.

He concluded his tweet by emphasizing that as a result of its bleak track records with regard to ignoring the norms of human rights and international law, the United States has no right to “abuse UN & IAEA to vilify Iran.”