Iranian MP: Nuclear agreement may turn into useless piece of paper

15 September 2019 17:26 (UTC+04:00)

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If the rights meant to be provided to Iran as per the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) will not be provided, it will turn into a useless piece of paper over time, a member of the Omid (Hope) fraction of the Iranian Parliament Mohammad Ali Vakili said in a statement published on the parliament's website, Trend reports.

According to him, it is logical for Iran to gradually reduce its commitments under this plan.

"As a matter of fact, if a further step is to be taken to reduce Iran's commitments to the nuclear agreement, the agreement will lose its essence and is rendered useless," he said.

Vakili also said that Iran is reducing its obligations as a reciprocal step because of the other involved parties failing to fulfill their commitments.

In January 2016, the JCPOA was implemented between Iran and the P5+1 group (US, Russia, China, UK, France and Germany) in connection with Iran's nuclear program. In May 2018, the US announced its withdrawal from the deal and imposed sanctions against Iran in November of the same year. In order to preserve the agreements reached as part of the JCPOA, the European signatories of the deal stated in January 2019 that a financial mechanism for maintaining trade with Iran called INSTEX was formed.

On May 8, 2019, Iran announced that it had ceased fulfilling its commitments regarding the sale of over 300 kilograms of uranium, as stated in the deal, basing its decision on the other signatories having not fulfilled their obligations. On July 7, Iran announced that it will not be fulfilling its commitments regarding the enrichment of uranium at 3.67 percent and the reconstruction of the Arak Heavy Water Reactor Facility as stated in the deal.

On September 5, Iran announced that it will enrich uranium using next-generation centrifuges and will not mix it with the enriched uranium residues as part of the third step of reducing commitments in the JCPOA, and stated that a further step will be taken in 2 months’ time, should the other signatories not fulfill their commitments.

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