Asked why a Russian official recently said the prospect of reviving the nuclear deal is vague, Mohammad Eslami said, “Ask themselves!”
Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s representative to Vienna-based international organizations, said last week that the outlook of reviving the nuclear deal was “very vague and complicated.”
“The favorable moment has been lost and absolutely nothing has happened during the past year and a half,” Ulyanov told Russian newspaper Izvestia, according to The Tehran Times.
Eslami, the Iranian official, said Iran was only one party to the nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.
“The other side is P5+1 and they should have abided by their commitments.”
“The JCPOA was intended for them to have the sanctions lifted but they didn’t implement it themselves,” he said. “We abided by our obligations.”
The nuclear deal was reached in 2015 after two years of negotiations. Iran’s original partners were the United States, France, Germany, China, Russia, and the United Kingdom.
Former US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the agreement in 2018, reimposing sanctions on Iran and restrictions on third countries that did business with it, effectively making its implementation harder. While US President Biden originally expressed a willingness to return to compliance, talks to revive the deal have stagnated.
