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US pushing Iran to walk away from JCPOA: Analyst

Wednesday, 08 March 2017 2:28 PM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 08 March 2017 4:16 PM ]

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (2nd L) talks with journalists during a rally against the Iran nuclear deal on the West Lawn of the US Capitol in Washington, DC, September 9, 2015. (Photo by AFP)

In a new provocative move to derail a nuclear deal between Iran and the six world powers, the American authorities have pushed a Luxembourg court to freeze $1.6 billion dollars of Iranian assets, says Stephen Lendman, author and journalist from Chicago.

Iran and the P5+1 group of countries - the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany - signed the nuclear deal dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015.

“What we’ve seen after the passage of the JCPOA (Iran-P5+1 nuclear deal) repeated attempts by America and [pressure on] European allies to keep going after Iran and bashing Iran and accusing Iran of all kinds of things,” Lendman told Press TV on Wednesday.

The United States wants “to keep punishing the country and pressuring the country” in order “to inflict enough pain to get Iran to back off from the JCPOA and then blame it for walking away instead of the countries that are responsible for doing all of these things to the Iranian government,” he added.

A meeting of the Joint Commission of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is pictured during its first meeting at the level of Political Directors at Palais Cobourg in Vienna on October 19, 2015. (Photo by AFP)

Under the JCPOA, Iran agreed to put a cap on its nuclear activities in return for the removal of nuclear-related sanctions imposed on it.

“[US President Donald] Trump has made it very clear that ... he is opposed to Iran and he despises the nuclear deal,” he noted.

Tehran says it has honored its commitments under the JCPOA, as repeatedly confirmed by the UN nuclear agency, but the United States has been dodging its obligations and has even imposed new sanctions on Iranians.

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The imposition of new sanctions, seizure of Iranian assets and provocation of Iranian military forces in the Persian Gulf are among the tactics that the United States has used to prompt Tehran to walk away from the JCPOA, the analyst said.

According to the analyst, the US sends warships near Iranian territorial waters to prompt Iran to respond to their aggression and then misrepresents Iran's self-defense response to antagonize Tehran.

Warning about the American imperialist agenda in the world, he concluded, “They (US officials) want the ongoing imperial wars continued and there could be all kinds of targets including Iran.”

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