Tehran: The President of Iran said his country would not accept a renegotiation of its nuclear agreement even if the President-elect of the United States demands one.
Hassan Rouhani on Tuesday said at a press conference here that renegotiating the deal with Donald Trump’s incoming administration was out of the question, Efe news reports.
“We cannot reverse a deal whose signature required years of negotiations, article by article and word for word,” Rouhani said.
He added that he believed Trump’s critical views on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) would not have much impact because it was not a bilateral agreement between Iran and the USA, but rather a multilateral one between several parties.
Trump has repeatedly lambasted the deal, while his appointee to lead the State Department, Rex Tillerson, said last week that the deal needed to undergo a “full review.”
This stance heavily contradicts the views of the plan’s other signatories, such as Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, who along with the US make up the P5+1 group.
The deal, signed in July 2015, led to a lifting of sanctions on the Asian country in exchange for limitations to its nuclear program.
Rouhani said that the lifting of sanctions “has proven Iran’s success in the nuclear deal,” citing the removal of sanctions against the oil, gas and transportation industries.
The Iranian leader described the JCPOA as a “political victory” for his country.
“We have told the world that Iranophobia was wrong, that Iran mustn’t be feared, that Iran seeks peace for the region and that Iran doesn’t deserve to be seen as a threat to international peace and security,” Rouhani said.
–IANS