There is no totally free European Union: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Jan Oberg, the founder of transnational.org, to discuss comments by Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency criticizing the West for neglecting commitments stipulated in the JCPOA.

A rough transcription of the interview appears below.

Press TV: When it comes to this JCPOA and the commitments and of course the parties carrying out what they have signed onto, we keep hearing from Iranian officials about how the US has not complied with their end either in the pace or in the details. Why is it then that the US perhaps is not fulfilling its commitments to begin with either fully or in terms of the pace that it signed up to?

Oberg: That is actually remarkable but it is not the first time we hear these complaints and we have recently seen the freezing of I think it was 2 billion dollars of Iranian assets, we have seen Iran’s parliament decide a law that will make possible raising a court case against the US for the coup d'état and CIA's involvement in 1953 and the Iran-Iraq war, etc.

The problem here is that this undermines the credibility to a certain extent of the United States doing this but what you and I would expect would be that a deal is a deal and with that the fastest possible implementation would be done on both sides and not only on the Iranian side as far as I understand that is the case. However, your ambassador here is not talking about the economic sanctions lifting and all that. He is speaking more diplomatic terms about the implementation etc. I think we have to understand that it is soon a year ago and for Iran it is incredibly important to see a result from this very important deal.

Press TV: It was the day that EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini had visited Tehran and I was speaking with you and you said that this is a bright spot here we have the EU foreign policy chief coming to Tehran and she came amongst other things reassuring Iranian officials about the fact that she is going to make sure that financial institutions in Europe are not going to be undermined by doing business dealings with Iran. She said she can force them but she is going to provide them even with information, I think she talked about a fifty-page booklet. So here you have the EU trying to reassure Iran of that but yet the US for what we understand is doing quite the opposite in some respects?

Oberg: Yes that is mind-boggling but there are many cases irrespective or beyond this one which shows that the United States is having its own foreign policy when it comes to Europeans and Europe’s future. You can take the confrontational politics now with Moscow, you can take the Ukraine crisis, you can see NATO being let by the US dragging in one country after another, very soon Montenegro too. So there is not a totally free European Union or a foreign policy chief of the European Union who can do what she wants.

If Washington wants to drag its feet or show its power or because of the presidential elections… because we don’t know what happens after. What we would know now by today is that Hillary Clinton and Trump 99 percent sure are the two candidates and Trump has said both that he accepts and he will tear it up. Hillary Clinton's main adviser now is the woman who participated in the negotiation of the nuclear deal for the United States. So she would probably not tear it up if she becomes president. But you know all these things is also making everything insecure. My worry is and remains what are the … of dynamics in Iran if this does not really yield some results and the Iranian people begin to see the benefits of sanctions lifting, what would play between the hardliners and the reformists if this does not go through. That is my main concern because for Iran this is everything for the United States it is one of many things.

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