Former U.S. state secretary and former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has said that the next administration of the United States should try to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal – JCPOA - which the Trump administration quit in 2018.

“Clinton said the next U.S. administration should try to rejoin the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA),” Atlantic Council reported on Monday.

During an Atlantic Council Front Page event broadcast on August 17, Clinton said she wasn’t sure whether Iran’s leaders would still be “receptive” to resuming the pact.

“One outgrowth of the Trump administration’s withdrawal of the United States from the JCPOA, she argued, is that Iran and China have brokered a military and economic agreement. Clinton added, however, that Chinese economic support for Iran still isn’t sufficient to counteract the pressure Tehran is under from international sanctions.”

U.S. President Donald Trump quit the nuclear deal in May 2018 and introduced the harshest ever sanctions in history on Iran as part of his administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.

The U.S. move was in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 that endorsed the JCPOA.

Under the JCPOA, Iran promised to put limits on its nuclear activities in exchange for the termination of economic and financial sanctions.

In May 2019, exactly one year after the U.S. unilaterally quit the deal and imposed sanctions on Iran, Tehran began to gradually reduce its commitments under the JCPOA to both retaliate for Washington’s departure and Europeans’ failure to honor their commitments.

On January 5, Iran took a fifth and last step in reducing its commitments and said it would no longer observe any operational limitations on its nuclear industry, whether concerning the capacity and level of uranium enrichment, the volume of stockpiled uranium or research and development. However, Iran has insisted if the Europeans honor their obligations it will immediately reverse its decisions.

Iran’s move is in line with paragraph 36 of the JCPOA.

President Hassan Rouhani said on May 6 that Iran will return to full implementation of the JCPOA if other signatories do the same.

NA/PA