TEHRAN – Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said late on Saturday that the U.S. is not in the position to certify Iran’s compliance to the 2015 nuclear deal, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

“It has been specified in the JCPOA that the only body to monitor Iran’s compliance to its obligations under the JCPOA is the International Atomic Energy Agency,” he said in a televised interview.

U.S. President Donald Trump decertified the nuclear deal and used harsh language against Iran as part of his new Iran strategy officially declared on Friday.

Zarif said that the U.S. will be isolated if it violates the nuclear deal.

He said that the European countries have stood against the U.S. and have not accepted the Trump administration’s excessive demands.

The chief diplomat also said the body tasked to oversee the implementation of the nuclear agreement will make a decision in response to Trump’s new measures.
 
“We will take proper actions to counter the U.S. acts. The JCPOA supervisory board will prepare the framework to counter the U.S.,” he said.

Foreign Minister Zarif says, “The U.S. domestic regulations are not credible for us and the U.S. is duty bound to act based on the JCPOA which is a UN Security Council’s resolution.”
Elsewhere, the foreign minister said, “The U.S. domestic regulations are not credible for us and the U.S. is duty bound to act based on the JCPOA which is a UN Security Council’s resolution.”

He also said that he will write a letter about Trump’s Friday speech in the next two days.

Trump has been attacked by various world dignitaries for his decertification of the Iran deal and his incendiary rhetoric against the Islamic Republic.

Hillary Clinton told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Friday that Trump’s initiative to ditch the Iran deal is “very dangerous”.

In a statement issued on Friday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Trump’s speech “once again underlines the inadmissibility of using aggressive and threatening rhetoric in international relations” and that such language was “doomed to fail”.

Former British foreign secretary Jack Straw reacted to the speech by Trump on his new strategy towards Iran by saying that Trump is willfully ignorant of the reality of Iran.

Yukiya Amano, the IAEA director general, said in a statement shortly after Trump’s speech, “As I have reported to the Board of Governors, the nuclear-related commitments undertaken by Iran under the JCPOA are being implemented.”

UN Secretary General António Guterres also in a statement called for keeping Iran nuclear deal.

NA/PA