UN chief meets Iranian FM in the UN headquarters

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UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the UN headquarters on Monday. The meeting comes two years after the deal to cut back on the country's nuclear program was inked.

Guterres expressed confidence the deal reached in 2015 will help ensure the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program. However, US President Donald Trump is calling the agreement a windfall to Iran, which only delayed its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Tehran is urging Washington to honor the deal by lifting sanctions on Iran. "Well, I think our compliance is rather straightforward because it's not for guessing whether we have complied or not," said Iran's top diplomat Zarif. "We have given the mandate to the IAEA, actually the agreement has given the mandate to the IAEA to verify our compliance and it has verified every time that Iran has complied.''

Signed on July 14, 2015, the Iran nuclear agreement was heralded as a triumph for American diplomacy and international cooperation on nonproliferation.

When it was signed in Vienna, the then US President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State, John Kerry, claimed the pact -- commonly known as JCPOA, for Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action -- as an undeniable success. Their Iranian counterparts, President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, were equally ebullient.

The act was also signed by China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany, lending it additional weight .

(With input from AFP)

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