Zarif Slams Western Attempts to “Reverse Victim, Culprits”

  In a tweet on Thursday, the top Iranian diplomat said Western countries are ignoring the fact that Iran’s measures to reduce its commitments under the accord came after the US and others failed to live up to theirs. The tweet was attached with a fact sheet released the same day by Iran’s Foreign Ministry that enumerates various violations of the nuclear deal — officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — by Western signatories to the accord, especially the United States. He noted that the Foreign Ministry’s fact sheet clearly proves which parties to the agreement shunned their responsibility, prompting Iran to reduce compliance with the agreement under Article 36 of the JCPOA. Under the new Biden administration, Washington has tried to distance itself from the Trump administration’s unilateral measures against Iran, resorting instead to measures aimed at achieving consensus with the United States’ traditional European allies – France, Britain and Germany – against Iran’s assertion that it is the US that must first honor its commitments under the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement because it was the first party that reneged on its nuclear deal commitments. The new fact sheet, among other things, shows how a report released by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the day that implementation of the JCPOA started “should have triggered effective sanctions lifting on the part of the US” and three European parties to the agreement – the UK, France, and Germany – but “it did not.”