NEW DELHI: Iran is working with its traditional partners like India, Russia and China on moving forward after the US pullout of the nuclear deal despite assurances from European nations that they will work out a solution on the issue, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said Wednesday.
Zarif said that Iran had been very patient with the nuclear deal issue and has show a lot of restraint.
The Iranian foreign minister, while speaking at a Facebook live interaction with the Observer Research Foundation on the sidelines of the Raisina Dialogue, said: “Unfortunately the West is showing that it is not a very reliable partner. The US first did not implement the deal in good faith and then decided abruptly to withdraw from the deal.”
Europeans, in spite of their political commitments and verbal commitments have not been able to carry out their part of the bargain, he argued.
“They are promising us that they will be coming up with the solution…We are not waiting, we are working with our friends, our traditional partners like India, Russia, China, mostly in our own immediate neighbourhood, and we are moving forward,” Zarif said.
The nuclear deal was negotiated and agreed to by Iran and the P5+1 (the US, UK, France, China, Russia, and Germany), granting Iran sanctions relief and returning frozen assets in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear programme and international inspections.
In May last year, Trump had announced that the US had withdrawn from what he described as “the horrible, one-sided” Iran nuclear deal.
Acknowledging that there was difference between the attitude of the European countries and America, he said the US has been blatant in violation of the deal that it worked out itself.
“Europe claims that it considers the deal of security significance, but it is not willing to make necessary investments believing that gains can be made without much sacrifice,” he said.
In his address at the Raisina dialogue, Zarif said the emerging global order now is “post western”.
“That is not derogatory to the West but rather a statement of simple reality. The west as a geographic or political construct no longer possess monopoly over all consequential global development,” Zarif said.
“The practical implication is that we cannot expect the West to provide us of all the remedies, nor can we blame it for all our maladies. Our region is seen as the locus of many global problems particularly extremism and terrorism, — be it West Asia, Central Asia or South Asia,” he said.
He said that blame game with the West was not the way forward and pitched for setting up of a regional mechanism to sort out issues and have a stable region.
“We can start with a regional dialogue forum, particularly in the Persian gulf region which has been the scene of so many wars in the last decade. We need a strong region than the dominance of strongemen,” he said. PTI
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