President Rouhani’s Government should change its passive strategy of “gradual scaling back nuclear deal commitments” and it should abort the opposite side’s strategy of killing time.

IRAN NEWS POLITICAL DESK

The main achievement and result of announcing ultimatum and strong response with an eye on making the opposite site pay dearly for its passiveness are for making it change its hostile approach.

European diplomats on condition of anonymity in interviews with Reuters have said that European countries have not triggered the JCPOA’s “dispute resolution mechanism” that could lead to the reimposition of United Nations sanctions.

European Union’s representatives in Wednesday meeting of board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)  once again deplored the U.S. pullout of the JCPOA and urged Iran to remain committed to the deal.

Europeans themselves have not fulfilled any of their commitments regarding the JCPOA and they just expressed their regret against the U.S. unilateral breach of the deal.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton slammed the Trump administration in a series of tweets Tuesday over Iran’s enrichment of uranium.

“When the Trump administration threatened to pull out of the Iran deal and impose more sanctions last year, it was clear that we’d lose our leverage and Iran would be free to do what it wanted,” she tweeted.

The IAEA on Wednesday and in its report verified that Iran has enriched uranium beyond the key limit dictated in its 2015 deal with major powers.

Reuters quoted some diplomats as saying that IAEA has confirmed that Tehran had enriched uranium beyond the deal’s limit of 3.67 percent purity, passing 4.5 percent. According to the IAEA report, amount of Iran’s enriched uranium with low purity has increased by 213.5 kilogram (almost 316 kg of UF6 LEU). According to the JCPOA which was signed in 2015, 202.5 kilograms had been specified as the ceiling for production of 3.67% enriched uranium by Iran. Ten days before the board of governors’ meeting, the IAEA had confirmed that Iran has started its scaling back strategy by increasing its enriched uranium to 250 kilograms.

In response the U.S. Administration asked for an emergency meeting of the IAEA over Iran’s breach of the JCPOA while it itself had pulled out of the JCPOA over 14 months ago and had extended its sanctions on Iran. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman has called this move a “bitter Irony”. The U.S. delegation in the IAEA meeting once again repeated the U.S. readiness to talk with Iran “with no preconditions” and termed Iran’s recent measures “nuclear extortion”.

Russia’s Ambassador to the IAEA Mikhail Ulyanov in Wednesday meeting of the IAEA reminded all signatories of the JCPOA that the deal’s goal was not only to resolve nuclear issues but to normalize economic and trade relations with Iran.

Spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Behrouz Kamalvandi, said that if the signatories of the JCPOA do not fulfil their commitments, Iran has many options to pursue like increasing  the enrichment, using advanced equipment and increasing the number of the centrifuges.

Regarding that such costly experiences are forced to Iran, the logical decision and measure will be to pull out of the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). We can keep the JCPOA which is good for mummification but by leaving the NPT, we could at least define the range of our commitments  in our national interests.

By: Hamid Reza Naghashian