TEHRAN – The Iranian defense minister said on Tuesday that the JCPOA and the UN Resolution 2231 contain no provisions for curbs on Iran’s missile program.

The U.S. and some of its Western allies claim that Iran's missile tests are a breach of the UN Security Council Resolution 2231 which endorsed the JCPOA.

“The JCPOA and UN Resolution 2231 include no terms and conditions or even provisional commitments which can be used as a basis for halting Iran’s defense program,” said Hossein Dehqan.

These are “all excuses,” he noted.

Earlier Dehqan had said that Tehran would keep upgrading its deterrent capability, not yielding to the enemy’s media hype.

The minister linked recent comments on Tehran’s missile plan to presidential election campaigns in the U.S. and pressures by Saudi and Israeli lobbies.

“They keep raising the missile debate as an excuse now for domestic use as the presidential election is approaching.”

“Also, the missile excuses of these countries (the ones objecting to Iran’s missile agenda) are made as a response to requests by reactionary Arab states led by Saudi Arabia and the Zionist regime,” the brigadier general remarked.
After the signing of the nuclear deal between Iran and global powers, the threat of missile debate leading to a second political confrontation between the two looms large.
Early July, Chancellor Angela Merkel told the German parliament that missile launches by Iran earlier this year were inconsistent with a UN resolution.

Also, in his first bi-annual report to the 15-member Security Council on the implementation of remaining sanctions and restrictions on July 18, the UN secretary general said, “I call upon Iran to refrain from conducting such ballistic missile launches since they have the potential to increase tensions in the region.”

However, Iranian officials have deemed the concerns unwarranted as none of the missiles test-fired by Iran were designed to carry nuclear warheads, rejecting them as “unfounded” and “hackneyed.”

AK/PA