MOSCOW, January 13. /TASS/. Russian Senator Konstantin Kosachev has lambasted a joint statement by the French, German and UK leaders (Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and Boris Johnson) that calls on Iran to meet its commitments under the nuclear deal though it does not impose the same requirements on the United States.
"In their joint statement, the leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom confirmed their commitment to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the so-called nuclear deal) on Iran. This is good news. However, the bad news is that France, Germany and the UK called on Iran to meet its commitments. Why is this bad? That’s because this statement lacks a similar clear and unambiguous call on the US," Kosachev, who chairs the Russian Federation Council’s (upper house) Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote on his Facebook page.
According to the senator, by having unilaterally withdrawn from the JCPOA, Washington has violated its commitment as a party to the treaty and a permanent UN Security Council member-state.
"Given Western logic, it turns out that no matter what happens with the JCPOA, Iran should observe it and if it fails to honor it, it is the only one to blame. This is dubious logic, to put it mildly. The US is apparently using and enjoying this impunity in its little unipolar world it has created," the senator noted.
Iran, the UN Security Council permanent members (Russia, the UK, China, the US, France) and Germany signed the JCPOA in 2015. The deal restricted Tehran’s nuclear development in exchange for lifting UN sanctions and unilateral restrictions imposed by the US and the EU. On May 8, 2018, US President Donald Trump declared Washington’s withdrawal from the JCPOA. A year after, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Iran was suspending some its obligations under the nuclear deal.
On January 5, Iran announced the final phase of scaling back its commitments under the landmark 2015 nuclear deal. Tehran’s new move implies that it will not comply with the restrictions on the number of uranium enrichment centrifuges set forth by the JCPOA.