Americans would ‘beg,’ remove all Iran sanctions if I win: Presidential candidate Zakani

Iranian presidential candidate Alireza Zakani says the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program is staged by Western governments in pursuit of their “neo-colonialist” goals, and that the Americans will ‘beg’ and remove all the sanctions on Iran if he wins the election.

Zakani, a member of Iran’s Parliament, said on Friday (May 28) that the Western governments cooked up baseless cases over Iran’s nuclear activities, regional role, missile power, and human rights situation so that they could “do business” and gain benefits.

Given that they have a “materialistic view” of things, they have found Iran’s nuclear program to be a proper subject of trade that could bring them “minimum or maximum profit,” he said.

Zakani referred to the current stalemate that has been surrounding the multinational nuclear deal between Iran and major world states since 2018, when the US abruptly withdrew from the agreement and imposed tough economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic, including bans that had been lifted under the original deal as well as additional restrictions.

“We did our part regarding the JCPOA and it is now the Europeans’ turn,” said Zakani, using an acronym for the official name of the accord, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. “The Americans, too, can rejoin the JCPOA by removing all the sanctions, followed by Iran’s verification.”

Following Washington’s withdrawal, the European co-signatories voiced verbal support for the JCPOA but stopped meeting their own contractual obligations, citing the US restrictions. America’s exit and the European failure to meet their side of the deal depleted Iran’s dividends from the JCPOA, prompting it to exercise a contractual right to suspend parts of its own obligations.

The fate of the agreement remains in doubt, with Iran and the co-signatories to the JCPOA having failed so far to find a solution to get the deal back on track amid Washington’s refusal to remove its sanctions before Iran returns to full compliance with the JCPOA.

Alireza Zakani – ‘An administration present in the field against poverty, corruption’

Principlist lawmaker Alireza Zakani represents the city of Qom in Iran’s 11th Parliament (Majlis).

Zakani pledged that if he won the June 18 presidential election, the Americans would “beg” and will be forced to remove all the sanctions, without explaining.

“All the American policies vis-à-vis Iran have faced defeat,” he added. “The current inflation in the country is a sign of the incompetence of some officials at home.”

The legislator said the JCPOA-related law that the Iranian Parliament adopted last December “should be implemented, and the outcome would be the desperation of America and Europe.”

“I consider the climate of diplomacy an opportunity. They should be driven into isolation through the right logic,” he said.

The Parliament’s law voided a previous agreement with the United Nations (UN) nuclear agency based on the 2015 deal that gave inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency the right to demand access to any site where they suspected nuclear activity might have taken place.

In late February, Tehran and the nuclear agency reached a three-month compromise under which inspectors would retain partial access to nuclear production facilities. That agreement was extended for 30 more days earlier this month amid ongoing talks in Vienna to save the JCPOA.

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