US President Obama reaffirms Iran's commitment to JCPOA

EghtesadOnline: American President Barack Obama confirmed Iran's commitment to the content of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

News ID: ۷۳۸۰۷۰

15 November 2016

Obama made remarks in a press conference on Monday, his first since Donald Trump was elected as the US new president during the Nov 8 presidential elections, IRNA reported.

He stressed that the July 2015 deal was 'not just an international agreement between us and the Iranians,' the TIME magazine quoted President Obama as saying.

However, he noted, it was an agreement 'between the P5+1, other countries. Some of our closes allies.'

'And for us to pull out would then require us to start sanctioning those other countries in Europe or China or Russia, that were still abiding by the deal, because from their perspective, Iran had done what it was supposed to do,' he said.

President Obama's remarks came in answer to a question wether he was worried about what the president-elect Trump has already threatened to do by unraveling the nuclear deal with Iran.

About the deal, Obama added 'Iran is a good example of the gap, I think, between some of the rhetoric in this town, not unique to the president elect, and the reality. I think there was a really robust debate about the merits of the Iran deal before it was completed.

'And I actually was pretty proud of how our democracy processed that. It was a serious debate. I think people of good will were on both sides of the issue. Ultimately, we were able to persuade members of Congress and the public, at least enough of them, to support it.'

On Iran's commitments to the JCPOA, the US president said 'We now have over a year of evidence that they have abided by the agreement. That’s not just my opinion. It’s not just people in my administration. That’s the opinion of Israeli military and intelligence officers who are part of a government that vehemently opposed the deal.'

“To unravel a deal that’s working and preventing Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon would be hard to explain, particularly if the alternative were to have them free from any obligations ...,” the president said.

Iran and the six world powers, the US, the UK, France, Russia, China and Germany, reached a landmark nuclear agreement known as the JCPOA on July 15, 2015.

'Implementation Day' of the deal was announced in January, 2016, as the anti-Iran sanctions were lifted after Iran's peaceful nuclear program was verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Also on November 11 in Prague, the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has held a joint press briefing with his Czech counterpart Lubomir Zaoralek stressing that the JCPOA was an international agreement not a bilateral one so every party of the deal has to remain committed to it.