JCPOA to ‘Fall Apart’ if US Withdraws, Russian FM Warns

TEHRAN (defapress) – Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov rejected the idea of reopening negotiations on the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, warning that the agreement will not survive if Washington pulls out of the agreement.

News ID: 68175

Date: 20 January 2018 - 14:13

“This agreement cannot be implemented if one of the participants unilaterally steps out of it. It will fall apart, there will be no deal then,” Lavrov told reporters at the United Nations in New York, Reuters reported on Friday.

The Russian foreign minister said he believed the United States was “going to try to convince the European states to take the same position that Washington has taken.”

“It cannot keep alive in a re-negotiated form, especially regarding the demands by the United States. It would not be acceptable for Iran and it is clear now, I believe, that the Europeans do understand this danger right now,” Lavrov said.

Last week, US President Donald Trump extended waivers of economic sanctions on Iran for another 120 days but said he was doing so “for the last time.”

Although the US president declined to withdraw from the Iran deal, which he has long railed against and formerly promised to “rip up”, he gave a four-month deadline to the US Congress and America’s main European allies to address what he called the “disastrous flaws” of the deal.

In response, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif condemned Trump’s reluctant announcement on the nuclear sanctions waiver, saying, “Trump's policy & today’s announcement amount to desperate attempts to undermine a solid multilateral agreement, maliciously violating its paras 26, 28 & 29."

He further stressed that the deal is “not renegotiable” and urged Trump to, instead of repeating tired rhetoric, bring the US into full compliance of the deal, just like Iran.