Iranian Parliament approves JCPOA Motion

Tehran, Oct 13: The Iranian parliament on Tuesday approved a motion to implement the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the agreement previously reached between Iran and the P5+1 group of world powers. The Iranian parliament, or Majlis, voted to approve the details of the single-urgency motion, which allows the administration to voluntarily implement its July 14 nuclear agreement with the P5+1 group of countries under certain conditions.

The motion secured 161 votes in favour and 59 votes in opposition while there were 13 abstentions. A total of 250 lawmakers were present at the legislature at the time of the voting. The outlines of the motion were approved in the Majlis on Monday. The motion’s provisions set out certain obligations that the administration has to observe in its implementation of the JCPOA.

Article 1 of the motion forbids either the production or application of nuclear arms by the government based on a fatwa issued by top leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and obliges the administration to participate in international and regional efforts aimed at countering the threat of such weapons.

Political commentators believe that there is no guarantee that the US will honour its commitments under the JCPOA. “There’s no real assurance on the American side that they will honour this agreement,” Press TV quoted Randy Short, a political commentator, as saying on Tuesday. “Inasmuch as America cannot honor its own constitution, why would I … believe that they would keep their treaties? We’ve watched them violate it with Vietnam,” he added.

Iranian officials, however, have already said that, in case of a violation of the agreement by the P5+1 members, the Islamic Republic reserves the right to return its peaceful nuclear activities to the scale that existed before the JCPOA was reached. In mid-July, Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the US, Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany — finalised the text of an agreement dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in the Austrian capital of Vienna.

Under the JCPOA, limits will be put on Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for, among other things, the lifting of all economic and financial bans against Tehran.