Iran’s Zarif, US’s Kerry Meet in New York, Discuss JCPOA Implementation

After a three-hour meeting behind closed doors at the UN headquarters in New York on Tuesday, Zarif told reporters that “the talks primarily addressed the proper implementation of the JCPOA in a way that all parties particularly the Iranian people would reap the benefits which they are entitled to.”

The senior Iranian diplomat further said that he and Kerry are scheduled to meet on Friday in a bid to explore ways to get their ideas into practice.

Kerry, for his part, told reporters, “We agreed we’re both working at making sure that the … nuclear agreement is implemented in exactly the way that it is meant to be and that all the parties to that agreement get the benefits that they are supposed to get out of the agreement.”

“We will meet again to sort of solidify what we talked about today,” he said, adding that he and Zarif would resume discussions in New York on Friday on the sidelines of a signing ceremony at the UN for the Paris climate agreement.

Zarif left Tehran for New York on Monday to attend the upcoming United Nations (UN) climate summit on April 22.

While the JCPOA, a 159-page nuclear agreement between Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) came into force in January, some Iranian officials complain about the US failure to fully implement the accord.

Last month, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei said Americans have yet to fulfill what they were supposed to do as per the nuclear deal.

Iran still has problems in its banking transactions or in restoring its frozen assets, because Western countries and those involved in such processes are afraid of Americans, Imam Khamenei said, criticizing the US for its moves to prevent Iran from taking advantage of the sanctions removal.