Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said through his top international affairs advisor today that the Islamic Republic will not participate in any renegotiating of the P5+1 nuclear deal as sought by President Trump.
“We need negotiators who will much more strongly represent America’s interests,” Trump said Friday in announcing that he would not recertify Iran’s compliance with the terms of the 2015, which kicks the issue back to Congress to decide if sanctions should be reimposed.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on CBS Sunday that the other international parties in the agreement are “not wrong” when they say that Trump does not have the power to kill the deal because it was not a bilateral agreement. “It’s not a decertification under the nuclear agreement that involves the multilateral parties,” he said. “…Under the JCPOA, under the nuclear agreement, it may be that we’re not able to reopen that agreement with everyone being willing to play.”
“I think the president is being very clear, not just to the Congress, but he’s being very clear to Iran and to the other signatories of the agreement as well that, if we cannot see movement, if we don’t see some encouragement that we’re going to address these, then there’s no reason to stay in. And he has every intention of walking out,” Tillerson added.
Ali Akbar Velayati, foreign policy chief for Iran’s supreme leader, told reporters in Tehran today, “The nuclear deal will not be renegotiated at all and we will not hold renegotiations.”
Chairman of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi said today that if Congress “decides to violate and abrogates the nuclear deal and its undertakings, the Islamic Republic of Iran will have no motivation to continue the path.”
On Sunday, Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani claimed that Tehran has “paid a high price in the nuclear deal,” and if “Trump’s incorrect behavior creates a situation in which we don’t use the benefits of the nuclear deal and only pay the price, we will certainly review this issue.”
Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Ron Dermer, told MSNBC this morning that “Iran is not going to agree to anything.”
“I have no doubt about that, because they were given the deal of the century. And it’s a deal that allows them to have nuclear weapons,” he added.
Dermer says he envisions a scenario that started with Trump decertifying the deal and highlighting several problems. “One was the sunset clauses; need to fix those,” the ambassador continued. “The second was the ballistic missile program of Iran, which is only used to develop nuclear weapons. And the third is to actually have an inspection regime where you can look at every site in Iran. Not just the declared sites, not just where the keys are under the light of the lamppost, but in the military sites in Iran where Iran actually in the past and in the future would do their nuclear weaponization work and other work.”
“Are those problems that can be solved outside of the agreement? I think they can. They can be solved through congressional legislation and they can be solved through follow-on agreements with the Europeans.”
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini plans on coming to the U.S. in early November to lobby for the Iran deal.
“Clearly the ministers are concerned about the fact that messages on the JCPOA might affect negatively the possibility of opening negotiations or opening even the space for negotiations with the DPRK,” Mogherini told reporters after a meeting of EU foreign ministers today.
In a joint statement Fridya, British Prime Minister Theresa May, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron said they “stand committed to the JCPoA and its full implementation by all sides” as “preserving the JCPoA is in our shared national security interest.”
“We encourage the U.S. administration and Congress to consider the implications to the security of the US and its allies before taking any steps that might undermine the JCPoA, such as reimposing sanctions on Iran lifted under the agreement,” the leaders said.
“At the same time as we work to preserve the JCPoA, we share concerns about Iran’s ballistic missile program and regional activities that also affect our European security interests. We stand ready to take further appropriate measures to address these issues in close cooperation with the U.S. and all relevant partners. We look to Iran to engage in constructive dialogue to stop destabilizing actions and work towards negotiated solutions.”
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