Everyone should contribute to full exploitation of the opportunity arising from the mid-July nuclear deal with major powers, rather than dawdle over the constant debate on the pact, the foreign minister said.
"All political persuasions, irrespective of their views of the accord, should make good use of this opportunity and its advantages," Mohammad Javad Zarif said in a meeting with provincial officials in Isfahan on Thursday.
"If we waste time evaluating the deal obsessively and fail to appreciate its advantages, they will be lost."
The pact between Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany), officially named the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, grants Iran relief from sanctions in return for temporary constraints on its nuclear program.
Highlighting the merits of the JCPOA, Zarif said any red line outlined by the establishment, especially those concerning the removal of sanctions, were "wholly or partly" observed by the negotiating team during nearly 20 months of talks leading to the deal. He noted that thanks to the pact "a strict ban with grave consequences" on the missile program have been replaced by "unbinding" restrictions.
"The missile ban is not part of the deal and we have officially notified the UN Security Council that we will push ahead with our missile program."
A UN resolution adopted in the wake of the JCPOA to endorse it prohibits any Iranian activity related to ballistic missiles.
Tehran does not consider the ban binding, arguing that it has been provided for in an annex to the resolution rather than its main text. The West and Israel were using the nuclear issue as "a pretext to portray a distorted image of Iran, so we had to eliminate that excuse in a way that our power bases remained unharmed," Zarif said.
"That is why we refused to discuss regional issues alongside the nuclear matter during the talks."
