Iran says US trampled on JCPOA while observing commitments

The United States is trampled on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action while Iran observes its commitments without any nuclear weapons, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi told the UN General Debate in New York. Analysts say the US should take advantage of the opportunity to revive the nuclear deal it ditched in 2018.

Raisi, who is currently on the US sanctions list, made his debut appearance at the UN General Assembly with an agenda to pursue a fair international order through economic multilateralism, according to Tasnim News Agency.

He said Teheran was not seeking any nuclear weapons but wants assurances that Washington s guarantees to observe the pact with no repeat of unilateral withdrawal and sanctions before Iran returns to the pact.

On September 20, in his meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron, he reiterated his call for reassuring guarantees and the closure of the ongoing inquiry into Iran by the International Atomic Energy Agency before a nuclear deal can be reached.

Since April last year, several rounds of talks have been held between Iran and the parties to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, in Vienna to revive the deal that the US dumped in 2018, reimposing sanctions on Teheran.

The latest round of nuclear talks was held in the Austrian capital in early August after a five-month hiatus, often with Iran and the US blamed each other for the delay. Iran has been demanding that the US doesn't withdraw from the deal if the JCPOA is revived.

Mehran Kamrava, professor of government at Georgetown University Qatar, told China Daily that the ball is in the US court.

The fact that Raisi himself is there, and taking the chief nuclear negotiator with him, is quite significant, as the Iranian team has indicated its willingness to discuss the nuclear issue on the sidelines of the meetings in New York if the opportunity arises.

It is important that rare opportunities like Raisi's trip to the UN should be used to engage in substantive and perhaps direct negotiations with the US, rather than the photo-op meeting that Donald Trump called for the last time former president Hassan Rouhani visited the United Nations, said Kamrava, who is also head of the Iranian Studies Unit at the Arab Center for Research Policy Studies in Doha.

Asif Shuja, senior research fellow at the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore, is not convinced that the Iran deal has stalled.

Shuja told China Daily that with both the Iranian and US presidents scheduled to speak at the UNGA, physical proximity could be a good sign for further progress of the Iran-US indirect talks despite both sides having denied direct meetings.

The Iranian delegation met with the French president, as well as the European coordinators of the JCPOA, the Qatari delegation and the South Korean delegation.

All these meetings indicate that there is a traction in the nuclear talks. The UNGA has provided a platform where the remaining differences can be dealt in an expedited manner, he said.

A senior Iran affairs analyst, Seyed Mostafa Khoshcheshm, told China Daily that Iran has not left the negotiating table with the world powers Rather, it is the US that is avoiding progress in the talks, with a host of Iranian representatives present at the UNGA.

Khoshcheshm, who taught at the Faculty of International Relations of the Iranian Foreign Ministry, said Iran wants guarantees that it will stand if a deal is revived.