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Iran will not settle for less than ‘verifiable, sustainable’ sanctions relief to revive nuclear agreement, CSUSB professor says
Press TV
Feb. 15, 2022

David Yaghoubian, CSUSB professor of history, was interviewed for a segment on the latest developments to revive the 2015 multinational agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which regulates Iran’s nuclear program. Sanctions, which were reimposed on Iran by Donald Trump’s administration when it pulled the U.S. out of the agreement in 2018 – the former president said he wanted a stronger deal and levied the sanctions to get Iran to the negotiation table – continue to be the sticking point in current talks in Vienna. Iran is seeking their removal.

Yaghoubian was asked about Tehran’s insistence on the actual and verifiable removal of sanctions against Iran. He said Iran entered into the agreement, which the administration of Barack Obama helped spearhead, to have the sanctions imposed on it then be removed. “Unfortunately the Obama administration never lived up to its commitments,” he said. “And I believe that (Iranian President Ebrahim Raeisi) and Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the foreign minister, are concerned thatbasically what  is coming will be a repeat of 2015, where there was ostensibly goodwill in the air and the United States was going to meet the commitments that it had signed on to on paper.

“And, instead what we saw was the Obama administration reneging on U.S. commitments maintaining the sanctions and, therefore, not enabling Iran to benefit from the agreement that it had signed on to,” Yaghoubian said.

He said Iran’s negotiating team should be vigilant of any kind of repeat of that and make it clear that without the verifiable, sustainable sanctions relief, “then JCPOA will not be returned to.”

Watch the segment at “President Raeisi: Rights of Iranian nation must be respected in JCPOA revival talks.”

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