Iran says Macron's remarks to deepen distrust among JCPOA parties

Iran says comments made by the French president in his meeting with US President Donald Trump will be of no help to saving the Iran nuclear deal and will just further deepen distrust among its signatories. 

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi made the remarks on Friday, reacting to Emmanuel Macron's call for fresh negotiations to "extend the terms of the JCPOA," as the nuclear deal is officially called.

"Under the current circumstances, their move to raise issues beyond the JCPOA will not only fail to help save the JCPOA, but will also prepare the grounds for further distrust among the parties remaining in the agreement," the spokesman said.

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• France's Macron says Iran nuclear deal must be saved

Such moves will also take the US closer to the goal behind its withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, namely the collapse of the multilateral deal, he added.

In a Thursday meeting with Trump, Macron listed four common priorities of the US and France in addressing "Iranian behavior": preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, reducing Iran's ballistic activity, containing Iran's regional activity and establishing peace in the region. 

"I think we do share the same objective on Iran," Macron said, calling for fresh negotiations to extend the terms of the JCPOA and to achieve those goals.

Mousavi slammed the European parties to the JCPOA for their failure to fulfill their commitments under the deal and their obligations following the US' illegal withdrawal from the agreement.

"The Europeans have failed to prepare the grounds for Iran to fully benefit from the multilateral agreement," he said. 

European powers - France, Germany and Britain - have been tinkering with a much-hyped special trade vehicle known as INSTEX that purports to circumvent US sanctions and keep some semblance of business channels open to Iran.

The three countries, however, have been struggling to operationalize it, raising serious doubts about their determination to compensate for last year’s unilateral US pullout from the 2015 nuclear deal.

Iran says ready to back JCPOA 'just as France did'

Iran says it is fully prepared to implement the 2015 nuclear deal exactly in the same way as the Europeans did.

Mousavi also dismissed the "hackneyed, baseless, and contradictory" claims made by the US president, saying the "worthless allegations" do not deserve a response. 

In the Thursday meeting, Trump claimed that the sanctions imposed by the US after pulling out of the agreement had crippled Iran's economy and left the nation in tatters.

"They’re doing very poorly as a nation," he said. "They’re failing as a nation. And I don't want them to fail as a nation. We can turn that around very quickly, but the sanctions have been extraordinary how powerful they’ve been, and other things. I understand they want to talk and if they want to talk that’s fine."

Iran stopped some of its commitments under the deal on May 8, and notified the remaining signatories of the accord that unless they protect its economy from US sanctions within 60 days, Tehran will start enriching uranium at higher levels.

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