Vienna to host JCPOA joint commission on Tuesday
The meeting will be co-chaired by Secretary-General of the European Union External Action Service Helga Schmid and Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Seyyed Abbas Araqchi, Mehr News Agency (MNA) reported on Sunday.
The event will be attended by representatives of France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia.
It will be held at the level of deputy ministers and political directors of the Iranian and 4+1 Group foreign ministers.
Receiving a letter in July from Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif regarding the non-adherence of European countries to 2015 nuclear deal, Schmid had said that the next meeting of the Joint Commission of the JCPOA will be held as soon as the conditions for travel are available due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The forthcoming meeting is important because the US has illegally called for the reinstatement of UN Security Council sanctions against Iran. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Thursday that Washington will return all UN sanctions against Iran “at midnight Sep. 1,” a claim which was strongly condemned by other signatories of the nuclear deal including the EU, Russia and China and was mocked by Iranian senior officials.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif reacted to US claims on returning unilateral sanctions against Iran by saying, “Obviously they don't understand law or UN. Maybe they can grasp this: You divorced the JCPOA in 2018. Your name on the marriage certificate is irrelevant.”
Washington withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018 and reinstated its unilateral economic sanctions against Iran in defiance of Resolution 2231.
Now after more than two years, the Trump administration is seeking to trigger the snapback of sanctions at the UN by claiming that it remains a member of the JCPOA.
Iran and the nuclear agreement’s remaining signatories have repeatedly reminded the US that by leaving the deal, Washington has, by extension, lost all of its rights to seek recourse to UNSC Resolution 2231 that endorses the JCPOA.
The United States’ most prominent Western allies have refused to fall into step with the push, which followed Washington’s humiliating defeat in securing an extension of the UN arms embargo against Iran at the UNSC.
Only the Dominican Republic voted ‘yes’ to Washington’s resolution calling for the extension of the embargo beyond October 18.
The United Kingdom, France, and Germany, all signatories to the JCPOA, say the US does not have the legal right to trigger the provision set out in the JCPOA because it pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.
On August 26, Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced in a six-point joint statement that the two sides agreed to further reinforce their cooperation and enhance mutual trust to facilitate the full implementation of Iran’s Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement (CSA) and the Additional Protocol (AP) thereto, which is provisionally applied by Iran since 16 January 2016.
The joint statement was released during a visit to Tehran by the agency’s chief Rafael Mariano Grossi.
Schmid reacted to the latest joint statement issued by Iran and IAEA stressing that EU continues to work with JCPOA.”
“Good news from Tehran on cooperation between #Iran and @iaeaorg. The EU trusts the impartial and independent role of the agency. In the meantime we continue our work to preserve #JCPOA with Joint Commission next week; I will chair on behalf of High Representative @JosepBorrellF,” Schmid wrote on her Twitter account on last Wednesday.
Source: Iran Daily