TEHRAN/MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 12th January, 2021) Iran hopes to see the removal of the United Nations "snapback" sanctions mechanism from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Tuesday.
"If there are negotiations [concerning the nuclear deal], this mechanism certainly must be abandoned as an irrational principle," Velayati said in an interview posted on the supreme leader's website.
Under UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which was adopted in 2015, snapback sanctions can automatically be brought back into effect on Iran should the country fail to meet its commitments under the terms of the JCPOA.
The United States started the procedure of triggering the snapback sanctions mechanism this past August.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Monday urged Iran to fulfill its obligations to the JCPOA in full. In a statement, Borrell said that the EU was hopeful the United States would return to the JCPOA, which is also known as the Iran nuclear deal, after President Donald Trump pulled out of the agreement in 2018.
Iran signed the JCPOA with China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK, the US, and the European Union in 2015. The agreement stipulates that Iran would receive sanctions relief for scaling back its nuclear program
