BRUSSELS. Sept 18 (Interfax) - The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran's nuclear program was an obvious success of international diplomacy but its potential was substantially undermined by the United States' withdrawal, according to Vladimir Chizhov, Russia's permanent representative to the European Union
"The conclusion of the JCPOA was a rare diplomatic success. It took about two years of very difficult talks, from 2013 through 2015. I know this first-hand, from those of our colleagues who were involved in them. It was a thoroughly-calibrated compromise. A compromise between the parties which were initially quite suspicious of one another," Chizhov said in an interview with Interfax in Brussels.
The agreement stipulated "both timeframes and mechanisms and the 'safety valves' and a host of technical details," as well ad hoc entities: the special commission and its working groups, he said.
"All this was meant to work. But then something happened that was beyond control of the other signatories: the change of government in the United States. In line with its policy to undo everything that was done by its predecessors, by repealing or reviewing their decisions, the current administration of President Donald Trump chose to pull out of the JCPOA," Chizhov said.
Because the agreement is multilateral, and one that relies on such a solid international legal basis as the UN Security Council resolution which was voted for unanimously, not least by the U.S., no one was allowed to simply ruin the JCPOA and so the U.S. withdrew unilaterally, Chizhov said.
"The first question that international community asked was: would this structure survive without the Americans? I must say, it has. Of course, not without losses and not without problems, including long-term ones. The remaining five signatories, the Euro-troika (Britain, Germany, and France) plus Russia and China, and Iran, of course, continued their efforts to implement the JCPOA.
"But the United Sates unfortunately did not confine itself to exiting the JCPOA on its own. It also devised a whole host of consistent steps in order to destroy the deal. These [steps] are: sanctions against Iran which [the U.S.] imposed unilaterally, and the extraterritorial application of the sanction toolkit to make JCPOA implementation more difficult for the other signatories. I am talking about the quite outright, and at times ham-fisted, manner of discouraging businesses, primarily European ones, but also other countries', from economic cooperation with Iran.
"Today the JCPO is alive rather than dead, so far. But the further we go, the more it will be reminiscent of a patient on life support," Chizhov said.