Tehran, Iran, October 18
By Mehdi Sepahvand -- Trend:
The Iranian Parliament passed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action law according to consensus that existed at the highest governmental level, Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said.
He said the JCPOA has a history of three years in the course of which senior Iranian officials had been working on it, IRIB news agency reported October 18.
Larijani explained that besides the Parliament, the Supreme National Security Council, Foreign Ministry, and many other entities had a hand in evaluating the nuclear deal.
Regarding why the Parliament's presiding board referred the JCPOA bill to the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission after it had been assigned to a special committee, Larijani said the sensitivity of the bill required so.
After forty days of intense scrutiny, the Iranian Parliament's Special Commission on the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, official name for the Iran nuclear deal) presented its report to the presiding board of the Parliament on October 4 to be put to vote.
But to their surprise, they faced a move which took the matter totally out of their hand and they felt their toils had been unappreciated.
The same day, the Followers of Guardianship parliamentary group, to which Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani is member, presented a bill which sought to recognize the JCOPA. The bill was referred to the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, which swiftly approved it, opening the way for the Iranian government to implement the JCPOA with the other sides of the deal, the group 5+1 (the US, UK, France, Russia, China, and Germany).
The JCPOA special commission in its report had generally evaluated the deal as containing many negative points that would harm the Islamic Republic, trying to encourage the lawmakers to vote against the nuclear deal.
Those members of the JCOPA commission who had supported the report now complain of a force that drove the matter out of the commission's hand and rendered the final outcome against their desire.
Five members of the commission who had opposed the report, after their opposite members succeeded in taking the report to the Parliament presiding board, wrote a public address, accusing the commission's majority of having overruled the toil of the 40 days and composed the final report in a way that neglected the joint views of all members. In their open letter these five lawmakers enumerated 165 positive points about the JCPOA which they said the chairmanship of the commission had neglected for their own preferences.