Iran's Foreign Minister Says Adversary Powers Try To Keep Sanctions Against Iran

TEHRAN (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 01st December, 2020) Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Monday that the proponents of the hard-line policies against Iran intend to undermine the atmosphere that has been created to lift sanctions from the country.

This statement was made after the recent assassination of Iranian nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, one of the key figures in Iran's nuclear program and the head of the Iranian Defense Ministry's innovation center. Tehran accused Israel of being behind the assassination.

"As you could hear from the news, these days the designers and proponents of the failed policy of maximum pressure against the courageous Iranian people are trying to take advantage of the last days of Trump to raise tensions and destroy the atmosphere that has been created in order to lift tyrannical sanctions," Zarif said.

In 2015, Iran signed the Joint Comprehensive Action Plan (JCPOA) with the United States, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom.

It required Iran to scale back its nuclear program and severely downgrade its uranium reserves in exchange for sanctions relief. In 2018, US President Donald Trump abandoned the landmark deal and implemented hard-line policies against Tehran, dubbed Maximum Pressure Campaign. Since Trump's decision to leave the JCPOA, tensions between the US and Iran have escalated, with Iran announcing that it would no longer follow the 2015 nuclear deal.

On Monday the Iranian parliament has passed a bill, titled "The strategic measure for the removal of sanctions," designed to allow the country to increase the uranium enrichment level to 20 percent or more � such uranium is considered a weapon-grade one. This step was made after Fakhrizadeh's killing, despite the restrictions imposed on the country by the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan, which restricted the level of Iran's enrichment of uranium at 3.67 percent.