Russia and Iran should do everything possible to prevent the collapse of the Joint Comprehensive Action Plan, said Foreign Minister of Russia Sergei Lavrov.
“As we know, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was approved by the UN Security Council resolution, but nevertheless the United States not only withdrew from the agreement in a very arrogant manner, but in fact prohibits all other participants in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action , and all UN member states in general, from implementing the resolution that cemented this international agreement. Of course, today we want to exchange views on how we can do everything in our power to prevent the collapse of this agreement”, – Lavrov said before starting talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
In 2015, the Six (UK, Germany, China, France, Russia, USA) and Iran announced the Joint Comprehensive Action Plan. The agreement provided for the lifting of sanctions in exchange for limiting Iran’s nuclear programme. The deal did not last three years in its original form: in May 2018, the U.S. announced a unilateral withdrawal from it and the restoration of tough sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Iran announced a phased reduction in its obligations under the agreement.
For the first time Tehran renounced a number of nuclear restrictions on the anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal from the agreement on the Iranian nuclear program – Washington left the deal May 8, 2018, Tehran responded exactly one year later, which he called “strategic patience”. The rejection of a number of points on the Iranian nuclear program in the first phase concerned the stocks of enriched uranium and heavy water. Subsequently, authorities in Tehran announced the second stage of reducing the nuclear deal obligations, stating that Iran would enrich uranium at a level that the country needed. The third phase began on 6 September, when Iran announced that it had begun working with a number of centrifuges, without limiting its nuclear research and development activities to the provisions of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
On November 6, Iran renounced for the fourth time its nuclear deal, from which the U.S. had previously withdrawn and reinstated sanctions against Tehran, and began using centrifuges to enrich uranium at the Fordow site, while the nuclear deal implied that the Natanz complex would be the only one for such purposes.