TEHRAN - Behrooz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), has said that Iran has been acting prudently by reducing its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the JCPOA.

“We have lost nothing in nuclear industry. We had not closed the path of return wherever we accepted a restriction. We have also been prudent in reducing our [nuclear] commitments,” he said during a meeting with a group of highly talented Iranians who reside in foreign countries.

He noted that Westerners seek to undermine Iran’s nuclear program as an element of power.

“We make efforts to have a good understating of the situation and to use opportunities properly. We should not lose the elements that empower us,” he remarked.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who quit the nuclear deal in May 2018 and imposed the harshest ever sanctions on Tehran, has been repeatedly calling for dialogue with Iran.

On May 8, exactly one year after the U.S. abandoned the deal, Tehran began to partially reduce its commitments to the agreement at bi-monthly intervals.

In the first stage, Iran announced that it will not limit its stockpile of the nuclear fuel to 300 kilograms allowed under the deal. However, on that date (May 8) Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) said if the remaining parties to the JCPOA, especially Europeans, devise a mechanism to protect Iran from the sanctions effect in the two-month deadline it will reverse its decision. 

But since European parties missed the deadline, on July 7 Iran announced that it has started enriching uranium to a higher purity than the 3.67%, thereby starting the second step.

Again, as Europe missed the second 60-day deadline, Iran moved to take the third step, removing ban on nuclear research and development (R&D).

In a letter on September 5, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif notified European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini about Iran’s third step.

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said on October 2 that Iran will continue to reduce commitments under the nuclear deal.

“Reducing nuclear commitments, for which the Atomic Energy Organization is responsible, should continue seriously and precisely as it was announced by the government till it reaches favorable result and it will definitely reach the result,” Ayatollah Khamenei said during a meeting with the High Council of the Commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

NA/PA