Press TV - European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has said that renegotiating 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries is "simply not an option."
Mogherini made the remarks during a European Parliament session in Strasbourg on Tuesday.
Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China plus Germany signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on July 14, 2015 and started implementing it on January 16, 2016. Under the JCPOA, Iran undertook to put limits on its nuclear program in exchange for the removal of nuclear-related sanctions imposed against Tehran.
US President Donald Trump delivered an anti-Iran speech on October 13, in which he said he would not continue to certify Irans compliance with the terms of the JCPOA, reached under his predecessor Barack Obama, and warned that he might ultimately terminate the agreement. Nine International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA) reports have so far confirmed Irans full commitment to its side of the bargain.
"If the IAEA certifies nine times that the nuclear commitments under the nuclear agreements are met, the deal is working. Full stop," Mogherini stressed. "It took us 12 years of extremely difficult negotiations led by the European Union to achieve these results. Renegotiating the deal or parts of it is simply not an option."
She went on to note that the EU has made its position very clear to US President Donald Trump that it fully supports the JCPOA, and that preserving the deal is a shared security interest for European countries.
"We Europeans have made our position very clear. Preserving the deal is our shared security interest," she added.
