Addressing his weekly presser on Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baghaei explained Tehran’s stance on the expiration of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 and the future legal framework of Iran’s nuclear activities, emphasizing that the resolution has formally ended as of October 18, in accordance with its explicit text.
He added that while Resolution 2231 has terminated, some of the rights it granted to Iran — including recognition of its enrichment program and related activities — remain intact.
Baghaei stressed that the JCPOA was a temporary understanding under which Western parties were obliged to lift unlawful sanctions imposed on Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, while Iran committed to voluntary transparency and confidence-building measures.
Iran carried out these measures until 2018, when the United States withdrew from the JCPOA, and even a year later, until May 2019, fifteen official reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency emphasized the full implementation of Iran's obligations, he added.
The UK, France, and Germany triggered a mechanism called the ‘snapback’ on August 28, setting in motion a 30-day process to restore all UN sanctions on Iran. The snapback mechanism was part of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (officially the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or the JCPOA) which allowed non-Iranian signatories to bring back UN sanctions if they deemed Iran to be non-compliant with its commitments.
In a Saturday letter to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Iranian, Russian and Chinese representatives at the UN said Europe’s decision to trigger the snapback lacked any legal foundation.
MNA