MOSCOW, July 13. /TASS/. Russian Ambassador to Tehran Levan Dzhagaryan on Wednesday said the US contradicts itself on the Iranian nuclear deal by formally supporting it while also trying to build a coalition against Tehran.
"This trip by [US President Joe] Biden [to the Middle East] will now be taking place under an anti-Iranian banner and will be aimed at cobbling together a certain coalition of Arab countries and Israel on an anti-Iranian basis, which is categorically unacceptable. I think that the Americans contradict themselves in this case. On the one hand, they seem to publicly state their alleged interest in reviving the JCPOA deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on the Iranian Nuclear Program - TASS), and on the other hand, they are doing everything possible to make sure it doesn’t happen," the ambassador said on Rossiya-24 television.
The diplomat insisted the US can’t be trusted on the Iranian nuclear deal. "The Iranians understand that very well. They are aware of that and so are we. It is enough to understand that when this deal was concluded in 2015, when the agreements were reached and all that was approved by a UN Security Council resolution, in 2018 the US Republican administration of Donald Trump grossly violated international law. I want to emphasize again that they grossly violated their commitments under international law and announced their withdrawal from the deal. Naturally, what kind of trust can we talk about," Dzhagaryan stressed.
The five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany struck a nuclear deal with Iran in 2015 to address the crisis over its nuclear program. The previous President of the United States, Donald Trump, in 2018 withdrew from this agreement. The same year, Washington imposed the most extensive sanctions on Tehran on record. The current American leader, Joe Biden, has repeatedly signaled he was willing to bring the US back into the nuclear deal.
Eight rounds of talks were held in Vienna seeking to restore the JCPOA in its original form and return the US to the agreement, before they were put on pause on March 11. The US-Iran indirect talks held in Doha in late June to restore the nuclear deal didn’t produce the desired results, according to the EU.