A top member of the National Iranian American Council called on the administration of US President Donald Trump on behalf of the US-based Iranian community to abandon his interventionist and hostile policies toward Iran.
"They ask Trump to respect the will of the Iranian nation. The kind of will that opposes foreign intervention and bloodshed, and favors peaceful political, economic and social reforms without violence," Reza Marashi said in a talk with IRNA on Sunday.
Trump has been harshly critical of the nuclear deal his predecessor Barack Obama, along with the governments of the other four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany, negotiated with Iran on July 14, 2015.
Frustrated with his own unfulfilled electoral promise last year to tear up the accord, the Republican hawk is now struggling to find an excuse to claim Iran is in "non-compliance" with its commitments and walk out of the UN-endorsed agreement.
"Most of the Iranian Americans are opposed to the White House's anti-Iran policy … and Trump's threats. They demand that the US president preserve the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and use diplomatic means to resolve US differences with Iran," Marashi said, referring to the landmark pact by its formal title.
The action plan subjected Tehran's nuclear program to time-bound curbs in return for granting it relief from international sanctions.
The seven-month-old Trump administration has twice certified Iran's compliance to Congress, as it is required to do so under the US law every 90 days, but he appears obsessed with a desire to declare Iran in violation the next time, due on October 15.
Last month, he signed into law a new round of sanctions against the Islamic Republic under a bill that had overwhelmingly cleared both chambers of the US Congress and also included penalties on Moscow and Pyongyang.
Message to JCPOA Parties
The measure drew the ire of Iranian officials, with President Hassan Rouhani threatening last week to pull Iran out of the agreement and build back its pre-deal nuclear program in a matter of hours if Washington imposes any fresh sanctions.
"The deal was a model of the victory of peace and diplomacy over war and unilateralism," said Rouhani. "It was Iran's preference, but it was not and will not remain Iran's only option."
"In an hour and a day, Iran could return to a more advanced [nuclear] level than at the beginning of the negotiations" that preceded the accord, Rouhani said. But Rouhani also tempered his own threat, adding that Iran seeks to remain loyal to its commitments under the nuclear deal, which opened a "path of cooperation and confidence-building" with the world.
Marashi said Rouhani's response was meant as an appeal to other JCPOA parties to rally to the deal's defense in the face of Trump's hostile stance.
"Rouhani's speech was a message not only to the United States but to Europe, Russia, China and other countries to do more to hold Trump accountable for his attempts at undermining JCPOA," he said.
