Iraq hopes that the next US administration will work out a different approach to the relations with Iran and will focus on easing tensions in the Gulf region, Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein said on Wednesday
GENOA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd December, 2020) Iraq hopes that the next US administration will work out a different approach to the relations with Iran and will focus on easing tensions in the Gulf region, Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein said on Wednesday.
"We hope that the new administration will approach this matter in a different way. We are in good discussion and relation with the Iranian side. As for the Iranian-American tensions, we hope that there will be a new political atmosphere in near future," Hussein said during the Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation (MED) when asked if Washington's return to the Iran nuclear deal was possible.
Joe Biden, who has been declared US president-elect, has earlier told the New York Times about his intention to return the United States to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) during his tenure and hold follow-up negotiations if Tehran returns to strict compliance with the agreement.
"As for the US president-elect and people surrounding him, we know them quite well, almost all of them were very much engaged in Iraqi affairs, they were all in the same administration as when president [Barack] Obama was there, and they were responsible in fact for the Iraqi file. So we know them quite well and we hope that we can have a different kind of discussion with them at least to manage the crisis and not to increase tensions in the region," Hussein added.
In 2015, Iran signed the nuclear deal with the United States, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom. It required that Iran scale back its nuclear program and severely downgrade its uranium reserves in exchange for sanctions relief, including lifting the arms embargo five years after the deal's adoption.
The deal was dubbed one of the biggest diplomatic achievements of the Obama administration, in which Biden was vice president. In 2018, incumbent President Donald Trump abandoned the landmark deal and implemented hard-line policies against Tehran. Since Trump's decision to leave the JCPOA, tensions between the US and Iran have escalated, with Iran announcing that it would no longer follow the 2015 nuclear deal.
