MOSCOW, October 13. /TASS/. Russia has never deviated from its position in support of the Iranian nuclear deal, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a meeting with journalists from Arab countries.
"We have never deviated from our stance in support of this nuclear deal, including [UN] Security Council Resolution 2231. Everyone is aware of this," the foreign minister said.
In addition, Lavrov noted that the final decision on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with regard to the nuclear program was made directly by Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister from 2013 to 2021, and John Kerry, who was the US secretary of state at the time. "The other participants in the negotiations did not take part in the final stage, but merely observed how the United States and Iran, represented by Javad Zarif, reached an agreement," the foreign minister said.
The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known as the Iran nuclear deal, with Iran in 2015, putting an end to a long-running standoff about Iran’s alleged development of nuclear weapons. However, during his first presidential term, US President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018 and re-imposed all the anti-Iranian sanctions after they began to be lifted under the deal. In response, Iran announced in 2020 that it would scale back its commitments under the JCPOA and limit access for International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors.
