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Iran's Rouhani Rejects New Nuclear Terms, Europe ‘Talking To All Sides’

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday [February 3] reiterated Iran’s opposition to any changes in its 2015 nuclear agreement with world power including new terms or addition of new parties − presumably Saudi Arabia as reportedly suggested by French President Emanuel Macron.

Referring to ‘5+1,’ the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany who were with Tehran signatories of the 2015 agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Rouhani said none of the clauses of agreement should be altered and no new parties added. “The JCPOA will not become 5+2 or 5+3,” he said at a weekly cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

Macron was reported by al-Arabiya television on Friday to have said that discussions with Iran would be “rigorous” and that a new deal should include Saudi Arabia and other French regional allies. It was unclear how this squared with France in December joining other JCPOA signatories – Iran, Germany, the UK, Russia and China – in calling for implementation of the JCPOA “by all.”

“We didn’t withdraw from the JCPOA to return to it,” Rouhani insisted. “There were seven chairs [signatories]. One [person] was inflicted with madness and left [his seat]. What does it have to do with the others? The JCPOA is what was agreed on. They can return if they want and if they don't, they can mind their own life.”

Iranian officials have repeatedly said in the past few weeks that they expect the administration of President Joe Biden to return to the JCPOA, which Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from in 2018, and to lift all sanctions as agreed in 2015. Since 2019 Iran has taken steps expanding its nuclear program beyond JCPOA limits.

“The United States needs to come back into compliance and Iran will be ready immediately to respond,” Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told CNN International on Tuesday. “The timing is not the issue.”

The new US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, however, has said there is “a long way” to go before Washington returns to the JCPOA. “Iran is out of compliance on a number of fronts,” Blinken told his first press conference on January 8.  “And it would take some time, should it make the decision to do so, for it to come back into compliance and time for us then to assess whether it was meeting its obligations.”

The European Union is pressing the Biden administration to lift sanctions on Tehran while EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell is engaging with all sides to revitalize the deal, EU spokesman Peter Stano said Tuesday. “We're talking to the American administration to see if those sanctions could be lifted, to see if we can have full implementation of the JCPOA,” he added. On Monday, Zarif said that an EU official might “synchronize” or “choreograph” moves involving both the US and Iran to revive the agreement.

A British-Iranian journalist, political analyst and former correspondent of The National and journalist at Iran International
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