TEHRAN - Agnes Von Der Muhll, the French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, has said that the international community is responsible to guarantee Iran’s benefits from the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA.

All parties, not just Europeans, are responsible to ensure that Iran gains economic benefits of the deal, she said according to IRNA.

She noted that France will continue making efforts to preserve the deal.

Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the UN-endorsed JCPOA in May 2018 and imposed the toughest ever sanctions against Iran in line with his administration’s “maximum pressure” policy against Tehran.

The remaining parties, particularly the European sides, have so far failed to honor their commitments since the U.S. returned sanctions and imposed new ones.

On May 8, exactly one year after the U.S. abandoned the multi-nation nuclear agreement and reimposed sanctions on Iran, Tehran said its “strategic patience” is over and announced a partial withdrawal from some aspects of the pact, saying that the country would no longer adhere to some of the limits on its nuclear activities. It also threatened to step up uranium enrichment if an agreement is not made within 60 days to protect it from the sanctions’ effects. 

In follow-up to that deadline, on July 7 Iran announced that it has started enriching uranium to a higher purity than the 3.67% as the Europeans missed the 60-day deadline to devise a concrete mechanism to protect the country from the U.S. sanctions.

Iran says its actions are in conformity with the paragraph 36 of the JCPOA. Paragraph 36 provided a mechanism to resolve disputes and allows one side, under certain circumstances, to stop complying with the deal if the other side is out of compliance.

On a report by Al-Monitor that French President Emmanuel Macron has proposed establishing a $15 billion credit line for trade with Iran, Mousavi said, “Following the Islamic Republic of Iran’s reactions to the inaction of the Europeans, a number of European countries launched a series of efforts and have been seeking to overcome the problems.”

He added, “The president of France…   has begun measures in order to reduce tensions, and the Islamic Republic of Iran has announced that it welcomes such efforts and would not reject them,” Tasnim reported.

In a phone conversation with Macron in late July, Rouhani said the first step that Europe should take to save the JCPOA is to normalize oil and banking ties.

“Unfortunately, despite Iran’s full commitment to its obligations, only a small part of Iran’s economic interests has been met, and after the withdrawal of the United States, we have not only not seen any serious action by Europe in this respect, but also some European companies left Iran following United States’ unilateral sanctions,” Rouhani stated.

“Full compliance with the commitments by Iran while the other side does not meet its least commitments is not acceptable for the Iranian people,” Rouhani said. 

He also said that Iran can reverse its decision to reduce nuclear commitments as soon as Europe meets the country’s economic interests.

So far, Europe has presented a mechanism, called INSTEX, for trade with Iran but it falls far short of European obligations based on the JCPOA. It only allows sale of medical equipment, medicine, and food, items which are not subject to sanctions.

NA