Farhang Jahanpour, a former Senior Fulbright Research Scholar at Harvard, said on Saturday that negotiations to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal are being sacrificed for the approaching congressional elections in the U.S. and Knesset elections in Israel.
Jahanpour also criticized other signatories to the nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), for remaining silent on the issue.
“Unfortunately, agreement on Iran nuclear deal has fallen victim to US & Israeli elections, instead of being judged on its own merits, & other JCPOA members are also silent,” Jahanpour tweeted.
Professor Jahanpour, who also taught for many years at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, also said the nuclear deal “must be separated from other disagreements with Iran.”
Iran and the U.S. are at loggerheads over certain issues in the West Asia region, including security in the Persian Gulf, the Syrian crisis and also Israel’s behavior in the occupied Palestinian territories.
In remarks on Sunday, Jahanpour also tweeted, “While Iran & US (with Israel in the background) continue haggling over details of JCPOA the whole deal is in danger of unraveling: “Meanwhile, the EU’s foreign policy chief has warned that “if the process doesn’t converge, the whole process is in danger.”
Having submitted its response to the latest U.S. proposals, Iran wants the draft text to revive the nuclear deal to include “stronger” language.
Tehran’s main demands reportedly include a settlement to the UN nuclear watchdog’s probes and guarantees from Washington that a future U.S. administration won’t renege on the nuclear accord again.
The U.S. has described the latest Iranian response as “not constructive.”
Tehran Times