Iran is looking to EU nations to provide funds to help it honour the 2015 nuclear accord, President Hassan Rouhani has warned.
In a phone conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday, Rouhani said Europeans must financially compensate Iran if they want to preserve the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), following President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the deal and restore sanctions.
Rouhani’s website quoted him as saying: “We must not let this great achievement of diplomacy be destroyed by others’ unilateral actions, which are unfaithful to their promises.”
Co-signers France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China want to preserve the JCPOA, which limits Iran’s nuclear activities in return for lifting international sanctions, and seek a way to keep Iran at the negotiating table.
U.S. President Donald J. Trump struck to a campaign promise last month when he withdrew the U.S. from the JCPOA, brokered under former President Barack Obama.
Mr. Trump predicted then that Iranians would someday “want to make a new and lasting deal” and that “when they do, I am ready, willing and able.”
He added that a new deal could lead to the “peace and stability we all want in the Middle East.”
Mr. Trump said Tuesday he hopes to negotiate a “real deal” with Iran over its nuclear program after Washington’s renewed sanctions kick in.
“I hope that, at the appropriate time, after the sanctions kick in — and they are brutal what we’ve put on Iran — I hope that they’re going to come back and negotiate a real deal because I’d love to be able to do that. But right now it’s too soon to do that,” Trump told reporters in Singapore.
For its part, Iran is urging longstanding ally North Korea to be cautious in future dealings with President Trump.
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