Iran planned violation of nuclear commitments ‘serious mistake,’ French FM Le Drian says

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – France’s foreign minister on Tuesday warned Iran that breaching its commitments as outlined in the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers would be a “serious mistake” and stated that the three European signatories of the agreement were working to de-escalate the situation.

“An Iranian violation would be a serious mistake and a bad response to the pressure exerted by the United States,” FM Le Drian said, according to Reuters, adding that his country along with the United Kingdom and Germany were working to reduce the tensions.

Ali Shamkhani, the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, announced earlier that his country would reduce its commitments under the nuclear accord, complaining that the European powers had not done enough to preserve it.

This comes amid soaring tensions between Washington and Tehran after the former left the agreement in 2018—which Iran, the US, Russia, China, and the EU’s UK, Germany, and France signed in 2015 after intense rounds of negotiations.

Since then, the US has imposed multiple rounds of punitive sanctions on Iran, with experts projecting that the moves have affected 80 percent of the country’s economy.

On Monday, the White House sanctioned Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei along with other military officials, with more expected to be imposed on Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif.

Tehran criticized the US moves and said they had ended all possible roads toward a diplomatic solution.

The White House has repeatedly stated that it does not seek war with Iran but instead wants to bring the country back to the negotiating table, possibly to work on a new deal.

President Donald Trump has been a firm critic of the earlier agreement, saying that it did not reign in Tehran’s “destabilizing” policies across the Middle East.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany