The sanctions regime imposed on Iran for its illicit nuclear program has been destroyed and cannot easily be re-instituted, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that Monday.
Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported:
“The structure of the sanctions that the US had built based on the UN Security Council’s resolutions was destroyed and like the 1990s when no other country complied with the US sanctions against Iran, no one will accept the return of the sanctions (in the future),” Zarif said on Monday, addressing a meeting at Iran’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations which is being headed by former Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi.
He dismissed western officials’ remarks that the sanctions can be re-imposed against Iran in a short period of time, and said such a process needs several years while Tehran’s return to its past nuclear activities can be done in a shorter time if the world powers don’t remain committed to their undertakings.
Zarif’s observation that Iran could “return to its past nuclear activities” more quickly than sanctions could be re-imposed effectively echoes a veiled threat made by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the end of June that if the West walked away from a deal, “we will go back to the old path, stronger than what they can imagine.”
In a similar vein, last week Iran sent a letter (.pdf) to the United Nations stating that “It is understood that reintroduction or reimposition, including through extension, of the sanctions and restrictive measures will constitute significant non-performance which would relieve Iran from its commitments in part or in whole.”
David Hazony, editor of The Tower, observed last week that a close reading of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the nuclear deal with Iran is known, shows that Iran did not agree that it would be subject to the re-imposition of sanctions if it were found to be in violation of the agreement:
Put simply: any reimposition of U.S. sanctions would appear to constitute a basic breach of the agreement, and this has been agreed to by both sides. Reimposition of UN sanctions, on the other hand, is only a violation of the agreement in the eyes of the Iranians—yet it is still not a possibility that can legitimately be seen as part of anything that can be called “the agreement.”
Thus, there is no “snap-back” provision in the agreement whatsoever. We may have been sold the JCPOA as an agreement, but in fact with regard to the whole discussion of reimposing sanctions—one of the most crucial selling points of the deal from the administration’s perspective—the document may be more accurately described as the record of a disagreement.
[Photo: BBC News / YouTube ]