TEHRAN(Bazaar) – Tariq Raouf, former Director General of the Atomic Energy Agency says, the statement by EU officials that the parties have made progress on specific indemnities that would guarantee Iran economic returns even if a new US administration or act of Congress overturned the deal again is total nonsense!
He adds that “If the US administration cannot guarantee what the next administration will decide on the JCPOA, how can it be claimed that it can be guaranteed that a new US administration or act of Congress would not be able to overturn the JCPOA again. Obviously, these EU officials are making incorrect and deceptive statements.”
What follows is the full text of the Bazaar News Agency’s interview with Tariq Raouf about about the new round of negotiations to revive the JCPOA.
“In my view the Biden team now has no interest in resurrecting the JCPOA but neither the US, EU or Iran will formally announce its demise. They will keep the Vienna talks process continue sporadically. The US intel determination is that Iran is not working on a device, Iran previously has communicated its intention not to develop a device to the US earlier and reiterated this in Doha that leaves the IAEA raising the alarm and the US think tanks jumping up and down on break out time ...
Last month Josep Borrel the EU foreign policy chief published an article in the Financial Times and warned that the EU was presenting its best and last offer, that time was running out on get back to the JCPOA as the US would get busy with mid-term congressional elections in November that Biden is projected to lose: Borrel said, “The space for additional significant compromises has been exhausted. I have now put on the table a text that addresses, in precise detail, the sanctions lifting as well as the nuclear steps needed.”
At the NPT Review Conference in New York on 1 August, US Secretary Blinken stated that "Iran remains on a path of nuclear escalation. Although it publicly claims to favor return to mutual compliance with the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, since March, Iran has been either unwilling or unable to accept a deal to achieve precisely that goal. Getting back to the JCPOA remains the best outcome – for the United States, for Iran, for the world."
In reality, the Biden administration is continuing the Bush-Trump policy of maximum pressure on Iran; and Iran is defying the US with a policy of maximum resistance. The US longstanding destructive blockade and sanctions on the Iranian economy clearly are illegitimate and illegal.
The Biden team under pressure from its own Congress and Israel and Saudi Arabia is continuing with its pressure on Iran. In July, the US announced new sanctions on Iran’s oil and petrochemical industry, and is strengthening its forces at the Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar in continuation of its militarised confrontation with Iran.
European diplomats still say that there are enough glimmers of possibility to justify reconvening the talks. Iran has relented on earlier demands that the US lift sanctions against its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as its insistence that the US guarantee it will not again renege on the agreement.
The statement by EU officials that the parties have made progress on specific indemnities that would guarantee Iran economic returns even if a new US administration or act of Congress overturned the deal again is total nonsense! If the US administration cannot guarantee what the next administration will decide on the JCPOA, how can it be claimed that it can be guaranteed that a new US administration or act of Congress would not be able to overturn the JCPOA again. Obviously, these EU officials are making incorrect and deceptive statements.”
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