A member of the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy committee has commented that the dispute between the US Congress and the Obama administration over a new sanctions bill on Iran is part of a pressure campaign to win concessions in the talks with the major powers on a final deal to resolve the long-running dispute over Tehran’s nuclear program.
“I see the US maneuvering on the role of the Congress and the likelihood of the imposition of sanctions by the Congress against Iran as a lever to exert pressure because no country is in need of an agreement more than the United States,” lawmaker Abbas Ali Mansouri Arani said in an interview with ISNA on Monday.
Some US senators are introducing a bill that would impose more sanctions on Iran if a final nuclear deal is not struck by the June 30 deadline for the nuclear talks or if Iran violates its nuclear agreements with the major powers.
US President Barack Obama has said new sanctions could derail the international diplomacy over Iran’s nuclear issue and has made it clear that he will veto any new sanctions legislation.
Backing Negotiators
Mansouri Arani said parliamentarians support the nuclear negotiating team and believe “the negotiators are acing in national interests”.
Pointing to the interim nuclear deal that Iran and the six major powers signed in Geneva in November 2013, the lawmaker said, “The Iranian negotiating team and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) should adhere to the agreements they reached in Geneva. Despite intense internal criticism (over the interim accord), we have always said that we should remain committed to the agreement.”
Elsewhere, the parliamentarian said, “It is obvious that any measure by members of the P5+1 that goes against (any terms of) the Geneva agreement will be regarded as the violation of the entire deal, and then our right to pursue our interests and step up our peaceful enrichment (program) regardless of any deal should be recognized.”
He went on to say that MPs had prepared a bill that “envisaged the country’s need for enriched uranium,” but they shelved the bill to support the nuclear negotiating team, but if the major powers renege on their agreements, “we see no reason why we should remain committed to the (Geneva) agreement.”
