French FM’:

JCPOA ‘Must Not Be Touched

TEHRAN (defapress) – French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian ruled out any alteration to the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers, saying that the agreement “must not be touched”.

News ID: 69122

Date: 10 March 2018 - 16:40

“Today they (Iranians) are complying with it; they must carry on complying with it. I think I heard commitments from President Rouhani in this respect. He is very committed to the agreement, which he regarded as a historic agreement. It is important for the sake of the world’s security for it to be maintained,” Le Drian said recently, according to the official website of French embassy in London.

“It must not be touched, it must be enforced, and that’s what we’ll be saying elsewhere too, it’s what President Macron will tell President Trump, it’s a dividing line between us…,” he added.

On March 5, the French top diplomat paid an official visit to Tehran and held meetings with senior Iranian officials, including President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

“In the meetings I had in Iran, there were points of disagreement, points of friction, where I set out France’s position very clearly and where I questioned the Iranian authorities about their intentions, particularly in the ballistics field. The ballistics field means missiles, and there’s a kind of capability-building frenzy on Iran’s part to acquire more and more missiles,” Le Drian also said.

Iranian officials have stressed that the country will not accept any change to the nuclear deal and that there will be no talks on Iran’s missile capability.

Iran’s armed forces spokesman said recently there could be no talks on the country’s missile program without the West’s destruction of its own nuclear weapons and long-range missiles first.

“The condition for negotiations on Iran’s missiles is the destruction of America’s and Europe’s nuclear weapons and long-range missiles,” Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri said.