TEHRAN – A reformist parliamentarian has cautioned that if the Iranian rights under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) are not met, the international deal will turn into a “worthless piece of paper”.

Mohammad Ali Vakili, a member of the Omid (Hope) bloc in the Majlis, said in an interview published on the Islamic Consultative Assembly Research Center website on Sunday that it is reasonable for Iran to gradually reduce its commitments under the JCPOA now that the accord has no benefit for Iran.

“As a matter of fact, if a further step is to be taken to reduce Iran’s commitments to the nuclear agreement, the agreement will lose its essence and will be rendered useless,” he opined.

Vakili also said that Iran is reducing its obligations as a reciprocal step because the other parties are failing to fulfill their commitments.

In January 2016, the JCPOA was implemented between Iran and the P5+1 group (the U.S., Russia, China, UK, France and Germany) in relation to Iran’s nuclear program.

In May 2018, the U.S. announced its withdrawal from the deal and went on to impose sanctions against Iran in November of the same year.

In order to preserve the agreements reached as part of the JCPOA, the European signatories of the deal stated in January 2019 that a financial mechanism for maintaining trade with Iran called INSTEX was underway, the benefits of it, however, yet remain to show up.

On May 8, 2019, Iran announced that it had ceased fulfilling its commitments regarding the sale of its surplus of 300 kilograms of uranium, as stated in the deal, basing its decision on the other signatories having not fulfilled their obligations.

On July 7, Iran announced that it would not be fulfilling another one of its commitments regarding limiting its enrichment of uranium to 3.67 percent.

On September 5, Iran announced that it was going to enrich uranium using next-generation centrifuges as part of the third step of reducing commitments under the JCPOA, and announced that a further step will be taken in 2 months’ time, should the other signatories not fulfill their commitments.

SP/PA