TEHRAN — European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has reiterated his support for the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA), saying the agreement continues to deliver in spite of the U.S. withdrawal.
“I want to be clear: As Coordinator – because the High Representative acts as coordinator of the JCPOA – I will continue to do everything possible to ensure the preservation and full implementation of the nuclear deal by all parties,” Borrell said on Wednesday at the European Parliament plenary debate on Iran.
“Here I want to be very clear also, once more: bringing back these (UN) sanctions would have meant the end of the JCPOA. 13 members of the Security Council, including all European members, rejected this approach and underlined the importance to keep the agreement in place – this way supporting the understanding that the U.S. is no longer part of the JCPOA because they freely decided to withdraw from it,” Borrell stated.
“I think that this achievement of the European Diplomacy, which took a lot (of) efforts from a lot of people, from Javier Solana (former High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy and Secretary General of the Council of the European Union) to Ms. Federica Mogherini (former High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission), deserves to be preserved,” he insisted.
Borrell also underlined that the Islamic Republic is the most monitored country in the world by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) with now almost 400 inspections per year.
Pointing to the United States’ efforts to bring back UN sanctions against Iran, he said such approach was rejected by almost all UN Security Council member states and thus all sanctions lifting commitments under the agreement remain in place.
“Here I want to be very clear also, once more: bringing back these sanctions would have meant the end of the JCPOA. 13 members of the Security Council, including all European members, rejected this approach and underlined the importance to keep the agreement in place – this way supporting the understanding that the U.S. is no longer part of the JCPOA because they freely decided to withdraw from it,” he said.
“They were also very clear that – after leaving the agreement in 2018 – the United States was not in a position to initiate the so-called ‘snap back’ process of bringing back United Nations sanctions under the UN Security Council resolution 2231. As JCPOA Coordinator, I thus want to reiterate that all sanctions lifting commitments under the agreement remain in place,” he added.
U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the JCPOA in May 2018, and imposed the “toughest ever sanctions” on Iran.
In recent months, the Trump administration has tightened its illegal sanctions on Iran, defying warning from other countries across the world who said the bans are severely hampering Iran’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
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