Post-Soviet security bloc CSTO to help preserve Iranian nuclear deal — statement

MOSCOW, November 28. /TASS/. States members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) support the international effort to preserve the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran’s nuclear program and will render efficient assistance to it, CSTO foreign ministers said in a joint statement on Wednesday. "[The ministers] favor its further step-by-step implementation on the basis of commitment by all parties involved to the obligations they had undertaken and on the condition that the carefully calibrated balance of interests, which forms the basis of the comprehensive agreements, is observed," reads the document, posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s official website. The ministers also "support the efforts aimed at de-escalation around JCPOA and express firm resolution to render efficient assistance to them in line with UN Security Council Resolution 2231." The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal, was signed between Iran and six international mediators (the United Kingdom, Germany, China, Russia, the United States, and France) in July 2015. Under the deal, Iran undertook to curb its nuclear activities and place them under total control of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange of abandonment of the sanctions imposed previously by the United Nations Security Council, the European Union and the United States over its nuclear program. The future of the Iranian nuclear deal was called in question after the United States’ unilateral pullout on May 8, 2018 and Washington’s unilateral oil export sanctions against Tehran. Iran argues that all other participants, Europeans in the first place, ignore some of their own obligations in the economic sphere, thus making the deal in its current shape senseless. On November 6, Iran has started the process of injecting gas into centrifuges at its underground Fordow facility, which de-facto meant the start of the fourth stage of Iran’s reduction of its nuclear commitments. Read more