A senior advisor to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has said Washington must lift all sanctions it imposed on Iran, if it wants to get back to the 2015 nuclear deal.
“There are conditions” for Washington’s return to the nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Ali Akbar Velayati said on Monday, according to Press TV.
“We do not insist, nor are we in a hurry to see the United States return. But if it wants to return, there are conditions, the most important of them is to remove sanctions to prove that the new administration is committed to the JCPOA obligations,” Velayati stressed.
“It’s up to them if they want to return or not, but … they must make up for past failures. Their past failures were that they not only did nothing to lift sanctions, but intensified them and this was against their commitments under the [nuclear] deal,” he noted.
Velayati added, “If any administration in the United States makes a commitment, it will be binding for subsequent administrations as well. It is not the case that every administration has their own commitment. So, we fulfilled our commitments, but they violated the obligations and normally if they want to return, they must lift the sanctions.”
The senior advisor to the Leader expressed regret that France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, which represent the European Union in the 2015 nuclear deal, had imposed many restrictions on Tehran in compliance with the United States, and in some ways had also imposed indirect sanctions.
Velayati, however, said Russia and China out of the JCPOA signatories have helped Iran as much as they could and fulfilled their commitments.
Addressing the nation on Friday, Ayatollah Khamenei said Iran was in no rush for the US to return to the deal.
“Our rational demand is the lifting of the sanctions. This is the Iranian nation’s right, which has been violated. They are duty-bound to do that… If the sanctions are lifted, then the US return to the JCPOA will mean something,” the Leader said.
The JCPOA was signed in July 2015 between Tehran and six world powers and ratified in the form of Resolution 2231.
In May 2018, the US president unilaterally pulled out the country from JCPOA and reinstated the anti-Iran sanctions that had been lifted by the accord.
As the remaining European parties failed to live up to their commitments to keep trade with Iran despite the US bans, the Islamic Republic moved in May 2019 to suspend some of its commitments under Articles 26 and 36 of the accord covering Tehran’s legal rights.
Tehran has said its countermeasures are reversible once Washington returns to the JCPOA, fulfills its commitments and ends its sanctions.