Earlier, the U.S. president said he was serious about imposing duties on car imports from the EU if the parties fail to conclude a trade agreement on terms that Washington likes.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called on the European authorities to demonstrate their sovereignty instead of responding to the U.S. economic threats. He wrote about it on Wednesday on his Twitter page.
“After selling his honesty and losing any legal grounds, [the U.S.] is threatened with new tariffs,” he said. – It would be better if the EU started showing its sovereignty”.
According to Zarif, when the “euro-troika” (Germany, France, Great Britain) last week “sold the rest of the nuclear deal” to avoid sanctions from U.S. President Donald Trump, the Iranian foreign minister warned that it would only “whet the appetite” of the U.S. administration.
On January 21, the U.S. president announced the seriousness of his intentions to introduce duties on import of cars from the European Union, if the parties fail to conclude a trade agreement on the terms and conditions acceptable to Washington.
On January 15, The Washington Post wrote with reference to sources that Trump threatened Paris, London and Berlin to impose 25 percent duties on European cars unless they accused Iran of violating the Joint Comprehensive Action Plan (JCAP). According to her, the warning was issued a week before the said countries launched a dispute resolution mechanism for the nuclear deal on 14 January. One newspaper source called the move “extortion” by the United States.
The future of the deal was questioned after the U.S. unilateral withdrawal from the deal on May 8, 2018 and Washington’s imposition of sanctions on Tehran for its oil exports. According to Iran, the rest of the participants, especially Europeans, do not fully adhere to their obligations in the economic part of the agreement, so it makes no sense in its current form. Therefore, Iran has started the phased suspension of its commitments under the OHRLLS related to uranium enrichment and research activities, and in early January announced the completion of that process.