Iran’s Government Holds Meeting As EU Awaits Answer On JCPOA

While reports say Iran is pressed to make a decision about the EU-proposed text for a final agreement to save the 2015 nuclear deal, the Raisi administration held a meeting Sunday evening. 

There was no mention of the nuclear deal, the JCPOA, in the official readout of the cabinet meeting, and state agencies reported that President Ebrahim Raisi only talked about the "discourse of resistance" as the only effective way to tackle problems facing the Islamic World.

‘Resistance’ is a label Tehran uses to refer to its allies and proxies in the Middle East who follow its foreign and regional policies.

Referring to August 14 designated as the “Day of Islamic Resistance” in the official calendar of the country, the president praised the concept of resistance in confronting “world arrogance”, an expression the Islamic Republic uses to refer to the United States. 

As the European Union submitted a final take-it-or-leave-it proposal to restore the Iran nuclear deal, some reports say Iran is unlikely to agree to a return to the JCPOA. 

The new text reportedly includes guarantees that foreign companies will be able to invest in Iran or operate there once sanctions are lifted, without fearing the repercussions of any party withdrawing from the deal, as the United States did in 2018 under President Donald Trump, but Tehran demanded more drastic concessions outside the scope of the original agreement, including over an International Atomic Energy Agency probe into undeclared nuclear material found in the country.