Iran sticking to nuclear deal amid new U.S. sanctions

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Iran is implementing its side of its nuclear deal with major powers, the United Nations (UN) atomic watchdog policing the pact reaffirmed on Thursday, two weeks after the latest wave of reimposed U.S. sanctions against Tehran took effect.

President Donald Trump said in May he was pulling the United States out of the 2015 nuclear deal for reasons including Iran's influence on the wars in Syria and Yemen and its ballistic missile program, none of which are covered by the pact.

Germany, France and Britain have been scrambling to prevent a collapse of the deal, under which international sanctions against Tehran were lifted in exchange for strict limits being placed on Iran's nuclear activities.

Many Western companies have cancelled plans to do business with Iran for fear of breaching the sanctions Washington has put back in place. That has raised fears that Iran will breach the deal's nuclear limits, which are designed to keep it a year away from being able to build a nuclear weapon if it chose to.

“Iran is implementing its nuclear-related commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,” International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Yukiya Amano told a quarterly meeting of his agency's 35-nation Board of Governors.

Amano speaks at a press conference in Vienna, March 5, 2018. /VCG Photo

The JCPoA is the official name of the nuclear accord.

“It is essential that Iran continues to fully implement those commitments,” he added, confirming the findings of a confidential report to IAEA member states last week.

Amano did not comment on the broader impact of U.S. sanctions, the latest round of which took effect on November 5 Iran has warned it could scrap the deal if signatories France, Britain and Germany and their allies fail to preserve the economic benefits promised by its terms.

U.S.: Iran has chemical weapons program unknown to global agency

While Iran is promising to continue its future with the multilateral nuclear pact, the United States claimed that the Middle East country is not being fully honest.

Iran has not declared all its chemical weapons capabilities to the global chemical weapons agency in The Hague, in violation of an international non-proliferation convention, the U.S. ambassador to the organization said on Thursday.

Ambassador Kenneth Ward told a meeting of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) that Iran had failed to report a production facility for the filling of aerial bombs and maintains a program to obtain banned toxic munitions.

There was no immediate Iranian reaction to the remarks.

“The United States has had longstanding concerns that Iran maintains a chemical weapons program that it has failed to declare to the OPCW,” Ward said at an OPCW conference.

“The United States is also concerned that Iran is also pursuing central nervous system-acting chemicals for offensive purposes,” he said.

Iran failed to declare the transfer of chemical weapons to Libya in the 1980s, even after Libya declared them to the OPCW in 2011, he said.

Ward cited the discovery of chemical-filled artillery projectiles, mortars and aerial bombs of Iranian origin as proof that Iran did not fully disclose its capabilities.

Iran: U.S. chemical weapons accusations 'dangerous'

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Friday said that U.S. accusations that Tehran has a chemical weapons program were "obscene and dangerous."

"[The] U.S. wants to resort to international conventions to make allegations against Iran when it's made a policy of violating them itself," Zarif said in a tweet.

Iran's Foreigner Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is pictured during a joint press conference in Istanbul, October 30, 2018. /VCG Photo

He said that allegations about weapons of mass destruction "by a country that supported Iraq's use of CW (chemical weapons) against Iran, then invaded Iraq to allegedly rid it of them is not just obscene, it's dangerous."

Earlier on Friday, the Iranian foreign ministry said Tehran "strongly rejects" the U.S. accusations.

Source(s): AFP ,Reuters