Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, during a seminar in Tokyo, said that it was in the interest of the United States to remain committed to the multilateral nuclear agreement, signed between the Islamic Republic and the P5+1 – the United States, Russian, China, France, Britain plus Germany.
The remarks by Iran’s top diplomat on the matter came following a vote last week by the US Senate to extend the ‘Iran Sanctions Act’ for 10 years, in what US officials said was a response to Iranian ballistic missile testing and its support of terror groups in the Middle East. The American move prompted Iranian officials to vehemently condemn Washington while vowing to retaliate, saying it violated last year’s nuclear agreement, which promised to lift economic sanctions against it. Another reason for Iranian concern is the fact that US President-elect Donald Trump referred to the nuclear agreement as a “disaster”, promising to scrap the deal one he takes office. US Secretary of State John Kerry said, however, during an address to German diplomats in Berlin, that the Iran nuclear agreement had made the world safer, rejecting US President-elect Donald Trump warning that it could lead to a “nuclear holocaust”. “Let there be no doubt anywhere: the region is safer, Germany and the United States are safer, Europe is safer, Israel is safer and the world is safer because Iran’s pathways to a nuclear weapon were blocked — and might I add — with Iran’s consent and participation and with their willingness to fill their plutonium reactor with concrete, with their willingness to take down their centrifuges, to lower their stockpile, to limit their enrichment. So this depends on all of us to keep this alive and I know that President Obama has already engaged in conversations with the president-elect (Donald Trump) and we will work as diligently as we can to impart to the incoming team the absolute urgency of keeping that and other agreements intact,” Kerry said.