EU can't save Iran nuclear deal after U.S. move: senior Revolutionary
Guard
Reuters Staff
WORLD NEWSMAY 10, 2018 / 10:11 AM / UPDATED 35 MINUTES AGO
EU can't save Iran nuclear deal after U.S. move: senior Revolutionary
Guard
Reuters Staff
3 MIN READ
ANKARA (Reuters) - European countries are powerless
to salvage the nuclear deal with Iran after the United States pulled out, the
deputy head of the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) said on Thursday.
Britain, France and Germany said they remained
committed to the deal despite Tuesday’s decision by U.S. President Donald Trump
to withdraw.
But Brigadier General Hossein Salami said Europe
“cannot act independently over the nuclear deal,” the semi-official Fars news
agency quoted him as saying.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday
that Tehran would remain in the 2015 agreement, though Europe had only a
“limited opportunity” to preserve it.
On Wednesday Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
cast doubt on the ability of the European signatories to guarantee Tehran’s
interests, adding: “I do not trust these countries either.”
Khamenei has the final say on all state matters and commands the
loyalty of the IRGC, which has huge political and economic influence
domestically.
Salami said Iran’s enemies were not seeking military confrontation.
“They want to pressure our country by economic isolation ... Resistance is the
only way to confront these enemies, not diplomacy,” Fars quoted him as saying.
Trump also said on Tuesday he would revive U.S. economic sanctions
against Iran, penalizing foreign firms doing business with Tehran and further
undermining what he called “a horrible, one-sided deal that should have never,
ever been made”.
Europeans fear a collapse of the deal could raise the risk of
deepening conflicts in the Middle East.
Early on Thursday, Iranian forces launched their first attack on
Israel from inside Syria, firing rockets at army bases in the Golan Heights,
Israel said.
That prompted one of the heaviest Israeli barrages against Syria since
the conflict there began in 2011.
The pact, the signature foreign policy achievement of Trump’s
predecessor Barack Obama, was designed to prevent Iran developing a nuclear
bomb in exchange for lifting most sanctions that had crippled its economy.
Sanctions were removed in 2016.
Trump complained that the agreement failed to address Iran’s ballistic
missile program, its nuclear activities beyond 2025 or its role in conflicts in
the Middle East, where Tehran has been involved in a proxy war from Lebanon to
Yemen for decades.
In defiance of Western pressure to curb the missile
program, Tehran says it is essential precautionary defense against the United
States and other adversaries, primarily Gulf Arab states and Israel.
“Exiting the deal and their concerns over Iran’s
missile work are excuses to bring our nation to its knees,” Salami said.
The IRGC’s overseas arm, the Quds force, operates in
Iraq, Syria and Yemen among other places.https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-europe/eu-cant-save-iran-nuclear-deal-after-us-move-senior-revolutionary-guard-idUSKBN1IB0X7
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