Federica Mogherini, the European Union foreign policy chief, said on Tuesday that the July 2015 nuclear agreement doesn’t belong to a single country.

“The nuclear deal doesn't belong to one country, it belongs to the international community,” Reuters quoted Mogherini as saying in a news conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Brussels. 

“We have the responsibility to make sure that this continues to be implemented,” she added.

According to the nuclear accord signed between Iran, the European Union, Germany and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – Russia, China, the U.S., France and Britain – Tehran agreed to limit its nuclear work in exchange for a lifting of economic and financial sanctions.

The nuclear agreement, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was signed on July 14, 2015 in Vienna.

On July 20, 2105 the UN Security Council adopted a resolution endorsing the nuclear deal. The deal went into force on January 16, 2016.

The new administration of U.S. President Donald Trump said in April it was launching an inter-agency review of whether the lifting of sanctions against Iran was in Washington’s national security interests.

Last month Mogherini said she was confident the U.S. would stick to the nuclear accord, despite its protestations to the contrary, as the deal is working.

“In any case the European Union will guarantee that the deal keeps, that we stick to that ... and that our policy of engagement with Iran continues,” the EU chief diplomat asserted. 

On June 29, 2017 the UN Security Council renewed support for the nuclear deal, underscoring that Tehran has shown full commitment to the accord and the resolution supporting it.

“The Secretary-General believes that the comprehensive and sustained implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action will guarantee that Iran’s nuclear program remains exclusively peaceful, while allowing for transparency, monitoring and verification,” 

Jeffery Feltman, the under-secretary-general for political affairs, told the UN Security Council.

On Tuesday Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, who was on a trip of Iran, called the JCPOA a “balanced” deal for which there is no “alternative”.

“The JCPOA is a useful and beneficial agreement which benefits Iran and the international stability and security and we reject any attempt to rewrite and review it,” Ryabkov told reporters.

NA/PA