TEHRAN - Majid Takht-Ravanchi, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, says any U.S. plan to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal will be worthless if it is not combined with a verifiable lifting of the sanctions on Iran, according to Tasnim news agency.

In an interview with khamenei.ir, he noted that Washington’s expression of readiness to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) will be worth nothing if the sanctions against Iran are not terminated in practice.

“We cannot agree on a signature on a letter alone. If the signature does not come with a process for verifying the (U.S.) measures, that would be meaningless,” Iran’s top diplomat to the UN remarked.

He emphasized that a termination of oil sanctions on Iran must entail assurances that Tehran will not face any problem to sell oil and that the customers will easily transfer money via the international banking system.

In remarks earlier this month, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei set the road map, stressing, “Iran will resume honoring the JCPOA in full only after the U.S. has removed all sanctions on Tehran in a practical and verifiable manner.”

The JCPOA was signed between Iran and six world states — the U.S., Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China - in July 2015. It was confirmed by UN Security Council Resolution 2231.

However, former U.S. president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018 and reinstated the sanctions that had been lifted under the deal.

In May 2019, Iran began to scale back its JCPOA commitments after the remaining European parties failed to fulfill their obligations and compensate for Washington’s sanctions.