TEHRAN – Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Tuesday that Iran will respond firmly to any violation of the nuclear deal, officially called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Under the JCPOA, Iran is tasked to slow down its nuclear activities and the West remove its sanctions on the country.

The deal struck in July 2015 between Iran and the 5+1 group (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) went into force early this year.

“We are pursuing all the issues in the form of a joint committee,” said Araqchi, the deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs. 

He said that there exists certain shortfalls in the way that the West is implementing the JCPOA.

Some major European banks are reluctant to enter banking transactions with Iran, fearing a punishment by the U.S. Treasury.

William O. Beeman, a professor of the State University of Minnesota, told the Tehran Times last month that “the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) at the U.S. Treasury Department maintains that European banks ‘may’ be violating American banking sanctions IF their transactions involve U.S. dollars.”

Beeman said since the United States maintains some old sanctions against Iran that are not related to the JCPOA it has “warned that if the treasury determines that these transactions violate the non-JCPOA related U.S. sanctions, the European banks may be fined.” 

“This has made European and Asian banks afraid to enter into financial transactions with Iran because the fines in the past have been substantial--billions of dollars,” he lamented.

He said, “By not clarifying these matters, the OFAC, which is staffed by people who are extremely hostile to Iran, has managed to unilaterally block the financial benefits for Iran involving all the other P5+1 nations.” 

NA/PA