With the occasion his visit to the United Nations meeting on the Non Proliferation Treaty, Mr. Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s Foreign Minister and Chief Nuclear Negotiator, will resume talks on the nuclear deal with the six world powers in New York today. The meetings are expected to continue in Europe with only two months left for the reach of a final agreement.
Talking to the University of New York audience, Mr. Zarif is confident that although no clear guidelines have been set in place, the draft agreement will soon take shape and once ratified, it will be implemented within a matter of weeks.
Under fire since 2006 when increasingly harsh economic sanctions isolated the country due to its alleged nuclear program designed for non-civilian purposed, Iran is now expecting a resolution to be endorsed in the United Nations Security Council. The purpose of the resolution is to put Iran in the clear and terminate the previous resolutions regarding its nuclear program and the multilateral sanctions.
The issue that arises is that recently an UK report forwarded to the UN panel of experts responsible for monitoring compliance with the sanctions regime in Iran stated that Iran recently attempted to purchase technology for uranium enrichment. That would represent a gross violation of the resolutions still in place and a betrayal to the future deal that imposes strict limits on the nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
The panel of experts released a statement that:
“The UK government informed the panel on 20 April 2015 that it ‘is aware of an active Iranian nuclear procurement network which has been associated with Iran’s Centrifuge Technology Company (TESA) and Kalay Electric Company (KEC)”.
Both companies are under sanctions for suspected involvement in uranium enrichment in military purposes.
On April 2, the deal reached between Iran and the P5 plus 1 in Lausanne envisioned a 70 percent cut in Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium, as well as the reduction of low-enriched uranium stocks. If the news is true, the deal, albeit non-binding, would be breached.
Nonetheless, experts on the matter stated that it would not prove such a point-in-cheek action, as the final agreement has not been reached.
During his speech at the University at New York, Mr. Zarif stated that is the United Stated Congress would refuse the possible agreement, then it would isolate the United States politically from the rest of the world.
“I believe the United States will risk isolating itself in the world if there is an agreement, and it decides to break it. Whether you have a Democratic of Republican president, the United States is bound by international law, whether some senators like it or not,” he added. “And international law requires the United States live up to the terms of an agreement it enters into.”
Further developments on the matter will be reported the following days as today sees the re-opening of negotiations on a draft.
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