TEHRAN - Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s ambassador to the Vienna-based international organizations, has said that the United States’ attempts to establish itself as a participant to the 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the JCPOA, have no legal grounds.

“Amb. @Gharibabadi: The U.S. attempts to establish itself as “JCPoA participant” have no legal grounds. 

Para 10, UNSC Res 2231 is a reflection of para 1.2 Annex IV of the JCPOA which enumerates ‘JCPOA participants’,” he tweeted on Saturday.

In another tweet, he noted that U.S. President Donald Trump ended Washington’s participation in the JCPOA on May 8, 2018.

“Trump ended The U.S. participation in JCPOA issuing a Presidential Memoranda on May 8, 2018: ‘... and I am today making good on my pledge to end the participation of the United States in the JCPOA’,” Gharibabadi said in his tweet.

In another tweet, he said, “The U.S. has also ended its participation in practice, it has not participated in the meetings within the framework of the JCPoA since its unilateral withdrawal from the Deal.”

“It has also violated all its commitments as a JCPoA participant and has spared no efforts to destroy it through re-imposition of sanctions and threatening others to be punished in case of trade with Iran,” he said in another tweet.

In a report on April 26, The New York Times said U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is preparing a legal argument that the United States remains a participant in the Iran nuclear accord that President Trump has renounced, part of an intricate strategy to pressure the United Nations Security Council to extend an arms embargo on Tehran or see far more stringent sanctions reimposed on the country.

“In an effort to force the issue, Mr. Pompeo has approved a plan, bound to be opposed by many of Washington’s European allies, under which the United States would, in essence, claim it legally remains a ‘participant state’ in the nuclear accord that Mr. Trump has denounced — but only for the purposes of invoking a ‘snapback’ that would restore the UN sanctions on Iran that were in place before the accord,” The Times said.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren has dismissed the argument by the Trump administration.

“The international prohibition on weapons going to/from Iran ends in October. To extend this arms embargo, the Trump admin is suddenly arguing that the US is a party to the same Iran Deal it abandoned. That makes no sense. Make up your mind, @SecPompeo,” Warren tweeted.

Professor Frank N. von Hippel, former assistant director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology, has told the Tehran Times that “as I understand the argument, the Trump Administration does not want Iran to buy conventional weapons.”  

Speaking on Friday, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, Iran’s ambassador to the UN, said, “The fact that the United States wants to say that it is a member of the JCPOA and use the path of Resolution 2231 is similar to a joke.”

The U.S. attempts to extend an arms embargo against Iran. The ban on selling conventional weapons to Iran under the Security Council’s Resolution 2231 that blessed the nuclear agreement will be lifted on October 18, 2020.

EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell has said that the U.S. can no longer be considered as a participating member of the JCPOA.

“It’s clear that in the statement by President Trump and the U.S. presidential memorandum of last May (May 218), they announced that he was ending his participation in JCPOA,” he said in an exclusive interview with RFE/RL on Thursday.

“And I also want to recall that the U.S. has not participated in any meetings of activities within the framework of this agreement since then. So it’s quite clear for us that the U.S. is no longer a participating member in this agreement,” Borrell added.

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