Zarif: Inordinate spin’ about reviving JCPOA aims to ‘reverse victim and culprits

Iran’s foreign minister says the recent flurry of activity on the part of Western countries, which is apparently meant to revive the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, actually aims to “reverse the victim and the culprits,” by ignoring the fact that Iran’s measures to reduce its commitments under the accord came after Western parties, topped by the US, failed to live up to their obligations.

Mohammad Javad Zarif made the remarks in a Thursday tweet to which he attached a fact sheet released the same day by Iran’s Foreign Ministry that enumerates various violations of the nuclear deal -- officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -- by Western signatories to the accord, especially the United States, after Washington unilaterally left the agreement in 2018 and reinstated unilateral sanctions on Iran.

“There has been an inordinate amount of spin about what needs to be done to resurrect the JCPOA, trying to reverse the victim and the culprits,” he wrote in his tweet, adding that the Foreign Ministry’s fact sheet clearly proves which parties to the agreement shunned their responsibility, prompting Iran to reduce compliance with the agreement under Article 36 of the JCPOA.

“This fact sheet indisputably corrects the historical amnesia & sets the record straight,” Zarif said.

There has been an inordinate amount of spin about what needs to be done to resurrect the JCPOA, trying to reverse the victim and the culprits.

This fact sheet indisputably corrects the historical amnesia & sets the record straight:https://t.co/T4eczpBzqx

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) March 25, 2021

Under the new Biden administration, Washington has tried to distance itself from the Trump administration’s unilateral measures against Iran, resorting instead to measures aimed at achieving consensus with the United States’ traditional European allies – France, Britain and Germany – against Iran’s legitimate position that it is the US that must first honor its commitments under the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement because it was the first party that reneged on its nuclear deal commitments.

The new fact sheet, among other things, shows how a report released by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the day that implementation of the JCPOA started “should have triggered effective sanctions lifting on the part of the US” and three European parties to the agreement – the UK, France, and Germany – but “it did not.”

It also explains how the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) granted Airbus and Boeing companies partial permission to sell planes to Iran, but after a seven-month delay, and only in response to a written warning by Iran, the country received only 3 out of 117 Airbus passenger aircraft it ordered—and none of the Boeing aircraft.

It also points out that it was former US President Donald Trump who encouraged foreign leaders not to do business with Iran, which was a clear violation of both the JCPOA and the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231 that endorsed it.

The fact sheet added that it was Trump who on May 8, 2018, announced that he was ceasing US participation in the JCPOA and signed “a presidential memorandum to institute the ‘highest level’ of economic sanctions on Iran.”

Enumerating a host of other measures by Washington, which clearly violated the internationally-recognized deal and after explaining Europe’s inaction, the Iranian fact sheet noted that “despite promises made by incoming US President Joe Biden, his administration has yet to take any steps to abide by either the JCPOA or UNSCR 2231—a resolution the US itself co-sponsored.”

“Iran, as evidenced by the above timeline, has shown maximum restraint in the face of ‘maximum pressure’, ‘economic war’, bullying, assassinations, cruelty and collective punishment of its people,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s fact sheet said, adding, “Today, the ball is firmly in the US court. If it claims interest in the JCPOA, it must abandon its unlawful violations and verifiably remove all sanctions imposed, re-imposed and re-labeled since January 20, 2017.”

It concluded by emphasizing that “Iran will stop all of its remedial measures upon verification of a US return to compliance.”

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