Speaker: Inspections beyond NPT Undertakings Impossible Unless All Sanctions Removed

Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani underlined that Iran would never accept its nuclear facilities to go under inspections beyond the country’s undertakings under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) unless all sanctions against Iran are annulled.

“The Group 5+1 (the US, Russia, China, Britain and France plus Germany) should pay heed that based on the parliament’s approval, any inspection beyond the NPT will be possible only after the removal of sanctions,” Larijani said, addressing an open session of the parliament in Tehran on Sunday morning.

Elsewhere, he referred to a recent letter sent to Tehran by 47 US senators who threatened to abort or change any possible nuclear deal between the US administration and Iran, and said the US senators wrote the letter in support of Israel’s stance on Iran after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the US Congress failed to receive international attention and was mocked at by political figures, but the letter has hit a heavy blow at Washington’s creditability and legal status in the world as it showed how Zionists’ financial backups and fundraising ends in cheap political moves.

“In fact, this group (the 47 senators) displayed to everyone that the US is distrustful, and they raised this question for all governments in the world that when they are discussing diplomatic ties with the US, whom are they talks to,” Larijani added.

In relevant remarks on Thursday, Leader of the Islamic Ummah Imam Seyed Ali Khamenei played down US senators’ letter, and said, “According to international norms, governments are bound to their commitments and those rules cannot be breached with the change of governments.

Addressing members of the Assembly of Experts in Tehran, he underlined that the Iranian officials were skilled and knew how to act in case of an agreement so that the US administration couldn’t breach its undertakings after that.

Leader of the Islamic Ummah Imam Seyed Ali Khamenei said the letter of US Senators on Iran was a sign of “collapse of political ethics” in the US.

Leader of the Islamic Ummah Imam Seyed Ali Khamenei also voiced support for the team of Iranian diplomats engaged in nuclear talks with the G5+1, and said that the members of the team appointed by the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani were “good, honest and sincere people who are working for the advancement of the country in future”.

The Leader went on to express concern that “the other side is cunning and deceitful and used to stabbing in the back”.

Also last Monday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who is also the country’s top negotiator in talks with powers, strongly rejected the US senators’ letter, saying the message is no more than propaganda and lacks legality.

Asked about the open letter of 47 US Senators to Iranian leaders, the Iranian Foreign Minister responded that “in our view, this letter has no legal value and is mostly a propaganda ploy. It is very interesting that while negotiations are still in progress and while no agreement has been reached, some political pressure groups are so afraid even of the prospect of an agreement that they resort to unconventional methods, unprecedented in diplomatic history. This indicates that like Netanyahu, who considers peace as an existential threat, some are opposed to any agreement, regardless of its content”.

Zarif expressed astonishment that some members of the US Congress find it appropriate to write to leaders of another country against their own President and administration, saying that from reading the open letter, it seems that the authors not only do not understand international law, but are not fully cognizant of the nuances of their own Constitution when it comes to presidential powers in the conduct of foreign policy.

“I should bring one important point to the attention of the authors and that is, the world is not the United States, and the conduct of inter-state relations is governed by international law, and not by US domestic law. The authors may not fully understand that in international law, governments represent the entirety of their respective states, are responsible for the conduct of foreign affairs, are required to fulfil the obligations they undertake with other states and may not invoke their internal law as justification for failure to perform their international obligations,” Foreign Minister Zarif added.

The Iranian Foreign Minister reminded that “change of administration does not in any way relieve the next administration from international obligations undertaken by its predecessor in a possible agreement about Iran’s peaceful nuclear program”.

“I wish to enlighten the authors that if the next administration revokes any agreement with ‘the stroke of a pen,’ as they boast, it will have simply committed a blatant violation of international law,” he continued, and emphasized that if the current negotiation with P5+1 result in a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, it will not be a bilateral agreement between Iran and the US, but rather one that will be concluded with the participation of five other countries, including all permanent members of the Security Council, and will also be endorsed by a Security Council resolution.

Zarif expressed the hope that his comments “may enrich the knowledge of the authors to recognize that according to international law, Congress may not ‘modify the terms of the agreement at any time’ as they claim, and if Congress adopts any measure to impede its implementation, it will have committed a material breach of the US obligations”.

The Foreign Minister also informed the authors that majority of US international agreements in recent decades are in fact what the signatories describe as “mere executive agreements” and not treaties ratified by the Senate.

He reminded the US lawmakers that “their letter in fact undermines the credibility of thousands of such ‘mere executive agreements’ that have been or will be entered into by the US with various other governments”.

Zarif concluded by stating that “the Islamic Republic of Iran has entered these negotiations in good faith and with the political will to reach an agreement, and it is imperative for our counterparts to prove similar good faith and political will in order to make an agreement possible”.