JCPOA Committee to Decide Response to ISA

President Hassan Rouhani said the committee tasked with monitoring the commitments of other side to the 2015 nuclear agreement is to convene on Wednesday to decide how to respond to the US Congress' recent legislation to renew the Iran Sanctions Act.

"The JCPOA committee will convene a meeting tomorrow, in which we will determine and announce a proper response to the [US] violation of the action plan," Rouhani was quoted as saying by his official website on Tuesday.

JCPOA stands for the formal title of the accord, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Rouhani made the announcement in a speech at the prestigious University of Tehran on the occasion of National Students Day.

The day marks the anniversary of the murder of three Tehran University students in 1953, by the security forces of the former monarchical regime.

They were killed when police forces opened fire on the students of University of Tehran who were protesting against the resumption of Iran's relations with Britain and a visit by the then US vice president, Richard Nixon, to Iran following the 1953 coup d'état, which removed the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq.

The ISA bill has yet to be signed by President Barack Obama to become law.

Rouhani reiterated a call on his US counterpart to avoid approving the 10-year extension to ISA, a law that was put in force in 1996 and will expire at the end of this month, if not renewed.

"Even if the US president signs the measure and then suspends its enforcement, we will consider it a breach of the JCPOA and will respond to it," he said.

The US State Department has said Obama is expected to sign the bill into law.

It has been the latest in a series of measures introduced by Republican lawmakers who control Congress and unanimously oppose the historic agreement to interfere with its implementation. 

Rouhani said the agreement was the result of collective decisions made after long consultations with the Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

"For the decisions adopted during the negotiations, we held hours of meetings with the Leader," he said.

The Republican move has been seized upon by Rouhani's conservative rivals ahead of the 2017 presidential election to reinforce their criticism of the deal, championed by him.

They have blamed moderate Rouhani for his government's failure to deliver the promised dividends from the action plan, which they insist has conceded too much to the other side and compromised the red lines of the establishment. 

It emerged from about two years of negotiations in July last year and went into force early this year to curb Tehran's nuclear program in return for the lifting of international sanctions.