No negotiations to take place until sanctions lifted

 Lifting of sanctions is the strategy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in response to US violation of JCPOA, said Fada Hussein Maleki, a member of Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission in an interview with Mehr News Agency.

If the Americans want to return to the table of JCPOA and the Europeans want to soften the international atmosphere, the only way is to lift all US sanctions, he added.

Answering a question over the possibility of renegotiating the JCPOA, with the US, the Iranian Lawmaker said, “No negotiations will take place until the sanctions are lifted.”

JCPOA is enforceable if the Americans live up to their commitments under the deal, he stressed.

The US under ex-president Donald Trump pulled out of the agreement in 2018 and imposed the “toughest ever” sanctions on Iran as part of his so-called “maximum pressure,” which tried in vain to force Iran back to the negotiating table for talks on a “better deal.”

Despite throwing verbal support behind the JCPOA, the European parties to the deal — France, Britain, and Germany — ultimately succumbed to Washington’s pressure and failed to fulfill their contractual commitments to Tehran, mainly by confronting the American sanctions.

That promoted Tehran to begin a set of retaliatory measures in several stages as part of its legal rights stipulated in Articles 26 and 36 of the JCPOA. The latest such measure was the halt in the implementation of the Additional Protocol to the NPT Safeguards Agreement, which was required by the parliament-adopted law.

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