MOSCOW, November 6. /TASS/. The alarming situation over the Iranian nuclear deal has emerged because the United States has not only discarded its own commitments, but is demanding the other participants should follow suit, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a news conference on Wednesday.
"We are greatly worried (by the situation over the Iranian nuclear deal - TASS), and this alarm developed not today or yesterday, but in May last year, when the United States in a challenging manner declared its pullout from this agreement," he said.
"The United States has not only dropped its own obligations, thus crudely violating international law, but rather arrogantly and with threats of punishment by means of sanctions prohibited all other countries of the world from complying with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action for the Iranian nuclear program," Lavrov said. "By doing so - and this is the root cause of the problem - Washington demanded that they should do nothing of what Iran is entitled to under the JCPOA. Iran is told to comply with everything without an exception but it is not given anything in return."
The future of the Iranian nuclear deal was called in question after the United States’ unilateral pullout on May 8, 2018 and Washington’s unilateral introduction of oil export sanctions against Tehran.
In May 2019, Iran declared the first phase of suspending some of its commitments (60-day suspension of enriched uranium sales). In July, Tehran proceeded with the second phase of the suspension (by declaring uranium enrichment to above 3.67%). In September Iran declared the third stage of reducing its nuclear deal commitments and lifted restrictions from research activity. And on November 6, Iran started injecting gas into to the centrifuges at the Fordow enrichment plant, which in fact signifies the beginning of a fourth stage of Tehran’s reduction of its nuclear deal commitments.