Iran may completely abandon JCPOA commitments in early 2020 - Kosachyov
MOSCOW. Nov 5 (Interfax) - Iran may fully terminate its commitments under the nuclear deal already at the beginning of the next year, Federation Council Foreign Affairs Committee head Konstantin Kosachyov said.
"Of course, one more news report from Tehran about the transition to a new stage of withdrawal from the nuclear deal cannot be hopeful, totally vice versa. Only a couple of steps are left until the complete end to Iran's commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and this regretful event may happen already at the beginning of the next year," Kosachyov wrote on his Facebook account.
From the very beginning, Tehran has sought the definite shift to uranium enrichment up to the weapons-grade uranium as its priority, he said. "Even now the Iranian authorities are saying that the situation can be reversed. As the agreement, but not weapons was at the beginning," the Russian senator said.
Tehran "quite accurately linked the sequence of its steps to actions (more precisely, the lack of actions) of the Europeans," Kosachyov said.
"Iran was not the first to withdraw from the deal, and, in essence, it has the right to expect that the other party will take the first step. Although, we see now that Europe is probably afraid of U.S. sanctions more than of Iran creating powerful weapons of mass destruction. In addition, this means that no one actually sees such a serious threat in Iran, though they have tried to assure us of the opposite for decades. When we in particular asked from whom U.S. missile defense systems will protect in Europe? It turns out that they have been lying to us from the very beginning," the Federation Council member said.