Austrian envoy: US exit opportunity to form new Iran ties

Austrian envoy to Tehran said that the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal provided opportunities for his country to develop new modes of cooperation with Iran, AVA Diplomatic reports.

Referring to Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani’s visit to Austria as the first official visit during his second term in office, Stefan Scholz said,  ‘He and Austria’s head of state jointly agreed that Iran has a universally endorsed, inseparable and independent right to enjoy economic benefits from JCPOA as long as Iran itself fulfills its obligations from the pact.’

Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the US, France, Britain, China, and Russia) plus Germany signed the nuclear deal in 2015. Iran accepted to curb its nuclear program in exchange for economic sanctions relief.

The US President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in May, calling it the worst deal ever. Washington has also re-imposed the economic sanctions the first set of which will take effect on August 6.

The European ambassador, whose country is the current head of European Union, said, ‘For this reason my country is working hard first of all on putting this EU package together.’

He made a reference to the efforts of the EU to find ways to save the nuclear deal and to maintain trade and business cooperation with Iran.

However we believe it will not be static, rather it will be an open-ended package with new elements being added once they are ready, he said.

‘In addition, knowledge management and joint learning will be at the center because we will have to adapt to the practice of the US sanctions and constantly fine tune our measures to keep banking and trading channels open,’ he said.

‘There would be a number of bilateral measurements’ he said, ‘so we are working as Austrians quite unorthodox new approaches to keep the banking and trading channels open.’

‘To give an example, we are looking at digital payment systems; this is a very innovative aspect of our economy,’ the senior diplomat said.

The exit of the US from the JCPOA as regrettable as it is; it ‘also gives us opportunities to rethink our mode’ of operation and the development of new forms of partnership with Iran.