Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that the US should remove all sanctions against Tehran as a legal responsibility without using it as a negotiating leverage.
“Lifting Trump’s sanctions, @SecBlinken (US Secretary of State Antony Blinken), is a legal and moral obligation. Not negotiating leverage,” Zarif wrote on his twitter page on Monday, addressing Blinken who had claimed that Tehran should first abide by its nuclear undertakings in order to have sanctions removed.
The Iranian top diplomat underlined that the sanctions and pressures policy “didn’t work for Trump—won’t work for you”.
“Release the Iranian people’s $Billions held hostage abroad due to US bullying,” he said, stressing, “Trump’s legacy is past its expiration date. Drop it, @POTUS (the US president).”
Blinken on Sunday said that Tehran should abide by its nuclear undertakings in order to have sanctions removed.
“Iran, I think, knows what it needs to do to come back into compliance on the nuclear side, and what we haven’t yet seen is whether Iran is ready and willing to make a decision to do what it has to do. That’s the test and we don’t yet have an answer,” Blinken told ABC News’ This Week.
This claim is made while Iran has repeatedly stated that the US is the party that has left the nuclear deal and it should first lift all sanctions, and after the verification by Iran, Tehran will reverse its compensatory measures.
Earlier this month, the Iranian parliamentarians underscored the need for Washington to lift all sanctions imposed against Iran before Tehran reverses its modified nuclear deal commitments.
The Iranian legislators called on the government to seriously deal with the western side in Vienna talks and terminate implementation of the agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the Additional Protocol to the NPT, given the fact that the deadline for reaching an agreement with the Group 4+1 (China, Russia, Britain and France plus Germany) in Vienna talks would arrive in few days later.
“Simultaneous with the Vienna meetings, the parliament emphasizes the policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran on the necessity for a real removal of all sanctions and its precise verification as the main condition for Iran’s adherence to its nuclear undertakings, and underlines that the truthful economic benefit of the Iranian people sets the criterion for assessing and accepting the results of talks between Iran and other nuclear deal member states,” the statement said.
“Therefore, the parliament does not accept any division and categorization of sanctions that would lead to maintaining a part of the economic pressures against the Iranian people and preventing economic benefits or disrupting them and seriously calls for complete, verifiable and irreversible lifting of sanctions which act as the US weapon, and believes that a partial removal of sanctions would be equal to the remaining of all sanctions, and accepting the remaining of a number of sanctions would mean an endorsement of their legitimacy,” it added.
The statement stressed that in order to achieve this goal, the parliament will monitor this process with special care and diligence in accordance with the Article 7 of ‘the Law on Strategic Action to Lift Sanctions and Protect the Interests of the Iranian Nation’.
“The Vienna meetings showed that the US and Europe do not yet have a serious will to lift all sanctions as they further seek to impose an agreement on Iran that would put further restrictions on its nuclear operations and pave the way for regional and defense talks,” it added.
The lawmakers said that the parliament insists on preserving and safeguarding the nuclear achievements of the country’s scientists given the excessive demands of the US and other western countries, including halting research and development activities and destroying the new generation centrifuges.
The statement noted that the Law for Strategic Action to Lift Sanctions has revolutionized the nuclear program and played an important role in the trend of talks on lifting the sanctions, and said, “Therefore, it is necessary for the government to rapidly implement all the technical provisions of this law, including launching of the uranium metal plant, the legal deadline for its operation has expired in accordance with the Article 4 (of the Law).”
The US, under former president Donald Trump, unilaterally withdrew participation in the agreement and re-imposed sanctions against Iran, which the accord had lifted.
The Trump administration subsequently launched what it touted as a campaign of “maximum pressure” against Iran, hoping to force the Islamic Republic to accept large-scale limits on its nuclear program and missile work, among other things.
The administration of US President Joe Biden has verbally renounced that policy and admitted to its failure, while expressing a willingness to return to the Iran deal. However, it has so far stopped short of taking any concrete steps to that end and retained the sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
Source : Fars News
