Kamal Kharrazi, the chief of the foreign policy think-tank advising Iran's spiritual leader, said on Friday that the United States could not return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) until the unilateral sanctions on Tehran are lifted, and if this does not happen, it would qualify as extortion
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 15th January, 2021) Kamal Kharrazi, the chief of the foreign policy think-tank advising Iran's spiritual leader, said on Friday that the United States could not return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) until the unilateral sanctions on Tehran are lifted, and if this does not happen, it would qualify as extortion.
"If the US decides to return to the JCPOA without lifting sanctions, this would amount to extortion, because the US will put forward a new request for the lifting of every ban," Kharrazi said, as quoted by the state-run IRNA news agency.
On December 21, the members of the JCPOA expressed their readiness to support the US' potential return to the agreement, something that has been widely speculated upon after Joe Biden � who was US vice president at the time the nuclear deal was negotiated � was elected as the next president.
Iran signed the nuclear deal with China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union in 2015. It required Tehran to scale back its nuclear program and severely downgrade its uranium reserves in exchange for sanctions relief, including lifting the arms embargo after the deal's adoption. In 2018, the US abandoned its conciliatory stance on Iran, withdrawing from the JCPOA and implementing hard-line policies against Tehran.
In December, Iran passed a law to increase its uranium enrichment and stop UN inspections of its nuclear sites in response to the killing of nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Earlier this month, Iran's Atomic Energy Organization said that the country succeeded in enriching uranium at 20 percent at the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, while the JCPOA limited the uranium enrichment level in Iran to under 3.67 percent.
