TEHRAN – Iran’s foreign minister has said the country will begin suspending more of its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers on September 6.

“The third phase (of limiting our nuclear undertakings) will start on September 6," Mohammad Javad Zarif said in an interview with the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper published on Tuesday.

The first phase started on May 8 and the second phase on July 7. Tehran has rowed back on its nuclear commitments twice in compliance with articles 26 and 36 of the 2015 deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The EU has promised to undertake 11 commitments…. We are not asking for any of these as preconditions for the full implementation of our commitments. We only want to sell our oil and receive the money.He added that Iran would reconsider its upcoming decision if it reaches an agreement with Europe and the European side starts implementing it.

According to a Persian translation of the interview published by Tasnim, Zarif noted that the JCPOA is based on two principals. “One of them requires Iran to ensure that its nuclear program follows peaceful objectives exclusively. The other requires the international community, the other parties [to the deal] in particular, to guarantee that Iran’s economic relations with the rest of the world is normalized.”

“Iran has upheld its commitments and the International Atomic Energy Agency has ratified this issue 15 times, five times of which are related to the time after the U.S. quit the JCPOA. But Iran’s economic relations with the world have not been normalized. In fact these relations today are much worse that they were before the nuclear deal, which means that the opposite party has failed to implement the deal.”

Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, U.S., Britain, France, and Germany) on July 14, 2015, reached a conclusion over the text of the JCPOA.

The accord took effect in January 2016 and was supposed to terminate all nuclear-related sanctions against Iran all at once, but its implementation was hampered by the U.S. policies and its eventual withdrawal from the deal.
Zarif went on to say that the EU has promised to undertake 11 commitments under the deal, including investment, civilian airplanes, transportation, and the return of European countries to Iran.

“We are not asking for any of these as preconditions for the full implementation of our commitments. We only want to sell our oil and receive the money. We have suffered hundreds of billions damage. Our economy is suffering. Our currency has lost 75 percent of its value. Europe has limited itself to only making an announcement that it supports the JCPOA. But here people are losing their jobs and their incomes.”

On May 8, 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump pulled his country out of the nuclear accord.

Following the U.S. withdrawal, Iran and the remaining parties launched talks to save the deal.

However, the EU’s failure to ensure Iran’s economic interests forced Tehran to stop honoring certain commitments, including an unlimited rise in the stockpile of enriched uranium.

Spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Behrouz Kamalvandi said recently that the country’s enriched uranium stockpile has reached 360 to 370 kilograms.

SP/