MOSCOW, September 10. /TASS/. Russia will vote against a draft resolution condemning Iran if it is put to the vote at the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Russia’s Permanent Representative to the Vienna-based international organizations Mikhail Ulyanov said on Friday.
"There should be no illusion. If a draft resolution on Iran is tabled in the IAEA Board of Governors, Russia will vote against," he wrote on his Twitter account. "There is no need for a resolution which would be not only senseless but extremely detrimental. Let’s better count on diplomacy."
Ulyanov said on March 4 that the United Kingdom, France, and Germany had officially refused to put their draft resolution criticizing Iran for voting by the IAEA Board of Governors. According to the Iranian foreign ministry, the draft was abandoned thanks to the efforts of Iran, Russia, and China.
The Joint Commission of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has had several offline meetings in Vienna since April to find ways to restore the nuclear deal in its original form. The sides discuss prospects for the United States’ possible return to the deal, steps needed to ensure full compliance with the deal’s terms by Iran, and issues of lifting the anti-Iranian sanctions.
The JCPOA, also known as the Iran nuclear deal, was signed between Iran, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (Russia, the United Kingdom, China, the United States, and France) and Germany in 2015. Under the deal, Iran undertook to curb its nuclear activities and place them under total control of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange for abandonment of the sanctions imposed previously by the United Nations Security Council, the European Union, and the United States over its nuclear program.
The future of the deal was called in question after the United States’ unilateral pullout in May 2018 and Washington’s unilateral oil export sanctions against Teheran. Iran argued that all other participants, Europeans in the first place, were ignoring some of their own obligations in the economic sphere, thus making the deal in its current shape senseless. This said it began to gradually scale down its commitments under the deal.