Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has called on Europe to defy US sanctions if the Trump administration torpedoes the international nuclear agreement with Tehran, the Guardian reported.
Zarif warned that if Europe followed Washington’s lead, the deal would collapse and Iran would emerge with more advanced nuclear technology than before the agreement was reached in Vienna in 2015. However, he insisted that technology would not be used to make weapons, in line with Tehran’s obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Speaking to the Guardian and the Financial Times, Zarif said the only way Iran would be persuaded to continue to observe the limits on its civil nuclear programme would be if the other signatories – the UK, France Germany, Russia, China – all remained committed to its terms and defy any subsequent US sanctions.
“Europe should lead,” Zarif said in an interview in the Iranian UN ambassador’s residence in New York.
The Iranian foreign minister said he expected Trump to carry through his threat not to certify Iranian compliance in a state department report to Congress on 15 October. Congress would then have 60 days to reimpose sanctions suspended under the deal.
“I think he has made a policy of being unpredictable, and now he’s turning that into being unreliable as well,” Zarif said. “My assumption and guess is that he will not certify and then will allow Congress to take the decision.”
Trump has said he has already made his decision but has not told anyone outside his immediate circle. He refused to tell Theresa May when she asked him at a bilateral meeting at the UN last week, despite the fact that the UK is a close ally and a fellow signatory to the agreement.
Zarif warned that US abrogation of the deal would backfire on Washington, saying that Iran would resume uranium enrichment and other elements of its nuclear programme at a more advanced level than before.
“The deal allowed Iran to continue its research and development. So we have improved our technological base,” he said. “If we decide to walk away from the deal we would be walking away with better technology. It will always be peaceful, because membership of the NPT is not dependent on this deal. But we will not observe the limitations that were agreed on as part of the bargain in this deal.”
He added that “walking away” from the deal was just one option under consideration in Tehran.
“There are other options and those options will depend on how the rest of the international community deal with the United States,” he said. “If Europe and Japan and Russia and China decided to go along with the United States, then I think that will be the end of the deal.”
However, Zarif pointed out that in a previous era of high tensions between Washington and Tehran – when the US adopted sanctions legislation aimed at punishing European companies for doing business in Iran – Europe had resisted and sought to insulate its firms from US sanctions.
“In the 1990s they didn’t just ignore it,” Zarif said. “Europe, the EU, has legislation on the books that would protect EU businesses and adopt counter-measures against the US if the US went ahead with imposing restrictions. And it has been suggested by many that might be the course of action that Europe wants to take.”