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Reopening Iran nuclear talks ‘absolute fantasy’

 

Just like the European allies of the United states, Iranians are also unwilling to reopen the tough nuclear talks that yielded the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, says a top senator at the Foreign Relations Committee.

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy made the comments Sunday as top national security aides in the Trump administration were busy calling for calm in the wake of the president’s failure to recertify the nuclear agreement.

Any effort to renegotiate the deal is “an absolute fantasy,” the Connecticut lawmaker told Fox news, adding that “The Iranians will not renegotiate it, and neither will the Europeans … And so if we were to pull out of this agreement, as the president is threatening, Iran would get everything they want. They would be able to restart their nuclear program, because we would be in violation of the deal. The Europeans would continue to grant them sanctions relief, their economy would continue to grow.”

Speaking from the White House on Friday, Trump said he would not recertify that Tehran is complying with the 2015 nuclear agreement.

According to Murphy, Iran is complying with the deal and “the White House is required to tell Congress if they are not, and they’ve submitted absolutely no submissions.”

The president is required by US law to certify every 90 days whether or not Iran is complying with the nuclear deal. He has certified the deal twice since coming to office.

The US Congress has 60 days to decide whether to reimpose economic sanctions against Tehran, removed under the accord.

‘Pure insanity’

The Trump administration is, meanwhile, exerting pressure on Tehran by introducing new sanctions against Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).

In a Sunday statement, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin accused the elite military force of providing support for terrorists, a baseless allegation also pursued in previous US administrations.

“The idea of sanctioning these people is pure insanity,” Gordon Duff, a senior editor at Veterans Today told Press TV on Sunday.

During the interview, the analyst further described IRGC as “an organization that’s been leading the fight against ISIL (Daesh) and has suffered hundreds of casualties.”

Duff added that the IRGC is fighting the “same enemy” that the US alleges to be battling, the Daesh Takfiri group, and is considered to be “on the same side as the United States” in this regard.

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