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Iran warns it won’t renegotiate nuclear agreement

The Islamic Republic of Iran will not re-negotiate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a multi-national deal that has sought to limit Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for international sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy. In a televised statement, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif condemned Washington’s demands of re-negotiating the deal as “unacceptable”, as a deadline set for the 12th of May by the Trump Administration for the U.S. congress and Washington’s European allies to “fix the flaws of the agreement” is almost a week away. “Let me make it absolutely clear once and for all: we will neither outsource our security, nor will we renegotiate or add on to a deal we have already implemented in good faith,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said.

 

The Iranian top diplomat further accused the United States of “consistently violating the nuclear deal, particularly by bullying others to prevent businesses to return to Iran.”

The comments by Foreign Minister Zarif come as a final attempt by the Islamic Republic to persuade the three European signatories of the international deal, including France, Germany and Britain, to apply pressure on the Trump Administration to preserve the 2015 agreement. The Europeans have not shied away from confronting, what the West perceives as “Iran’s destabilizing actions across the Middle East, including its ballistic missile program and its support for internationally recognized terror groups in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. Nevertheless, when it comes to the nuclear agreement, European leaders have maintained Tehran’s compliance, basing their position on reports published by the International Atomic Energy Agency that is tasked with monitoring Iran’s submission to the terms of the JCPOA. It important to note, however, that the International Atomic Energy Agency continues to decline to directly address accusations of Tehran’s non-compliance by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in light of attaining new nuclear-weapons archive materials that according to the Israeli leader, provides “conclusive proof” of a secret Iranian project underway for the development of nuclear weapons.