US after undermining JCPOA: Think-tank official

Director General of Chairman’s Office at the Tehran-based Strategic Council on Foreign Relations (SCFR) Abdolreza Faraji-Rad said the US will not officially terminate the historic nuclear agreement and rather seeks to undermine it, AVA Diplomatic reports.

Some economic issues in Iran are rooted in the violation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and in preventing its due implementation by the Americans, he said at a meeting of the council attended by ambassadors of Sweden, Italy and Britain late on Tuesday.

‘The Iranian nation has been further united in the wake of US anti-Iran measures in the United Nations,’ he said.

Noting that Iranians’ protest to economic uses is an internal affair, he also said that certain economic woes originate from violation of the JCPOA by the Americans.

Farji-Rad, Iran’s former ambassador to Sri Lanka, Norway and Hungary, criticized the US and certain countries’ double-standard policies regarding democracy, saying ‘how are popular protests in Europe, France, Britain and US called freedom of expression and prevalence of democracy but public protests in Iran to economic woes are called riots?’

He said the US wants to pile up pressure on Iran and prevent economic prosperity in the country. ‘They want to put the people under economic pressure so that the Islamic Republic will leave its stabilizing role in the region.’

‘Iran’s presence in Iraq and Syria is at the request of the legal governments of the countries. Iran’s cooperation with its allies is aimed at establishing security in the region and fighting extremism and terrorism.’

Iran defeated Daesh in the region in cooperation with its allies, he said. ‘The current US government wants to increase pressure on the Iranian nation to instigate dissatisfaction among them so that Tehran will be forced to abandon its stabilizing role in the region.’