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EU Top Official Holds Talks In Iran To Reduce Tensions

By Orkhan Jalilov February 7, 2020

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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell held a meeting in Tehran, Iran on February 3, 2020. / president.ir

A newly appointed European Union foreign policy chief has said that European countries are seeking to preserve the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal and reduce tensions in the region.

"As the EU's High Representative, I will do everything in my power to create a robust interaction for saving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA),” the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, told Iranian President Hassan Rouhani during his visit to the capital Tehran on February 3.

Borrell referred to Iran's role in regional affairs, saying that "developing cooperation with Iran has always been important for the EU.'' He stated that today European countries are seeking to preserve the JCPOA, and resolve issues to keep the deal in place, and expressed his hope that all parties must live up to their commitments and attempt to settle the problems.

At the same meeting, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said that Iran is fully committed to its obligations under the JCPOA, criticizing the other side’s failure to live up to its commitments and adding that "Iran is still ready to interact and cooperate with the European Union to settle issues.''

"Unfortunately, the unilateral withdrawal of the United States from the agreement [in May 2018] created many obstacles and difficulties for other parties to fully implement it," the president added.

Josep Borrell also met Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and during the meeting, the two sides exchanged views on the JCPOA, as well as the ways to reduce regional tensions, and the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX) which is a European special-purpose vehicle (SPV) established in January 2019. Its mission is to facilitate non-USD transactions and non-SWIFT to avoid breaking U.S. sanctions, the official website of the Iranian foreign ministry reported.

The EU serves as a guarantor of the nuclear deal, and Josep Borrell has a formal role in its dispute resolution process, which Britain, France and Germany activated in January after Iran said it was no longer abiding by some limits on nuclear material.

The new EU foreign policy chief has visited Tehran for the first time after taking office. Borrell, Spain’s former foreign minister and ex-Speaker of the European Parliament replaced Federica Mogherini as the new EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy in late 2019.

Tensions between Iran and the U.S. have steadily increased since President Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear agreement and re-imposed sanctions on Iran in 2018. Tehran has responded by gradually rolling back its commitment to the deal.

Furthermore, tensions in the region stepped up after the killing of the former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani by the United States in Iraq in a drone strike on January 3. Washington accused him of the deaths of hundreds of Americans and the injuring of many more during extraterritorial military and covert operations using its trained proxies. After the assassination, Iran announced that it would no longer respect limits set on how many centrifuges it can use to enrich uranium.