JAKARTA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th July, 2023) Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday that he was not very optimistic about possibilities of the resumption of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the Iran nuclear deal, due to uncertainty regarding the policy of the US administration following the 2024 presidential election there.
"Next year there are elections in the United States, a new administration will come. And who knows what kind of the administration it will be, Democratic or Republican. But no one can give any guarantees that this new administration will not repeat the trick of withdrawing from the agreement reached ... So I'm not very optimistic about the possibilities of JCPOA resumption," Lavrov said at a press conference on the sidelines of ministerial meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Jakarta.
In 2015, Iran signed the JCPOA with China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States as well as Germany and the European Union. The deal envisaged lifting sanctions against Tehran in exchange for restricting the Iranian nuclear program. During the presidency of Donald Trump, the US withdrew from the deal in 2018, reimposing sanctions against Iran. Tehran reacted by reducing its obligations under the deal, including those concerning nuclear research, centrifuges and uranium enrichment levels.
In December 2021, talks on the resumption of the JCPOA were resumed, but a year later the progress on the deal became largely frozen.
