Hezbollah: US’s potential return to JCPOA great victory for Iran

Hezbollah says the United States’ potential return to the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world countries would constitute a “great victory” for the Islamic Republic.

In the event that such a prospect materializes, “it means that it (Iran) has achieved a great victory,” the Lebanese resistance movement’s Deputy Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem told Lebanon’s al-Manar television network on Sunday.

“And any victory for Iran is a victory for the whole (resistance) axis,” he added.

The agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action came by in July that year in Vienna. It lifted nuclear-related sanctions against Iran, which, in turn, effected some voluntary changes in its peaceful nuclear energy program.

The deal was hailed by the United Nations as a pillar of regional and international stability and ratified by the UN Security Council resolution in the form of a resolution.

The US, however, left the JCPOA in 2018 and re-imposed the sanctions that the deal had relieved. The Israeli regime as well as some of its regional and international allies played a major role in instigating Washington to quit the agreement.

Iran returned Washington and others’ non-commitment to the JCPOA with a set of gradual nuclear countermeasures.

On Tuesday, the deal’s remaining signatories launched fresh talks in the Austrian capital to examine the potential of fresh sanction relief and reversal of Iran’s retaliatory steps.

The Islamic Republic says it refuses any talks with the US as long as it keeps the bans in place. It also asserts that it only reverses its reprisal once the latter lifted all the sanctions in a manner that could be verifiable by Tehran.

The Vienna talks have been yielding both negative and positive appraisals. The parties to the talks have agreed to pick up where they have left next Wednesday.

Qassem said it would take around two months for the nuclear deal to be restored, adding, “The Americans consider it better than the absence of any agreement at all.”

Lebanon’s woes

Next, the Hezbollah official turned to Lebanon’s economic and political woes that has seen Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri being tasked with forming a cabinet four times in six months, but failing to do so on all the occasions.

Some observers have attributed the continual failure to his succumbing to pressure from the US, France, and Saudi Arabia.

The United States strictly objects to Hezbollah’s deep-seated influence in Lebanon’s political and military affairs, and has taken the country under tough sanctions to force it to confront the group.

France, Lebanon’s former colonial ruler, has also been pressing the country to enact certain “reforms” so it can secure financial assistance amid its crippling economic conditions.

Saudi Arabia, where Hariri has been born, also has a long history of intervening in Lebanon’s affairs, including by preventing him from leaving the kingdom during a trip that he had made in 2017.

Qassem said, “Political schemes imported from abroad are reasons for crisis in Lebanon, and not Hezbollah arms which has always protected Lebanon,” referring to various foreign countries’ consistent opposition to the group’s official participation in Lebanon’s defensive activities, and their trying to link the influence with the country’s troubles.

“External factors are the reason for Lebanon’s collapse, the US played a major role in it, and a corrupt class took a hand,” the official regretted.

“Regarding the government formation in Lebanon, the obstruction is internal at a 90% rate, no one imagines otherwise,” he noted.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk