India Calls For Return to ‘Full Implementation’ of Iran Nuclear Deal

New Delhi has called for “full implementation” of the Iran nuclear deal, or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed between the P5+1 states (Russia, the US, France, China, the United Kingdom and Germany) and Tehran in 2015.

Former US President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled Washington out of the deal in 2018.

“We encourage the concerned parties to continue dialogue and diplomacy towards an early resolution of differences and return to full implementation of the JCPOA,” India's Permanent Representative to the UN Ruchira Kamboj said during a Security Council meeting on non-proliferation in New York on Monday.

The Indian diplomat reckoned that the “way forward” in returning to the implementation of the JCPOA was to “to clarify and resolve all outstanding safeguards issues” raised by global nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Strained Relations Between Iran & IAEA

India's remarks come amid the ongoing impasse between the IAEA and Tehran over traces of uranium supposedly found at several undeclared sites, after the Biden administration last year indicated its declared willingness to return to the nuclear agreement.

Speaking at the Security Council debate, UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo claimed Iran was looking to enrich “worrying quantities of uranium”, as reported by recent talks between an IAEA delegation and Iranian officials in Tehran which concluded on Monday.

A resolution adopted by IAEA’s Board of Governors (BoG) last June called upon Tehran to comply with the nuclear safeguards in the wake of a report by Director General Rafael Grossi claiming the presence of uranium particles of anthropogenic origin at Turquzabad, Varamin and Marivan”.

Tehran has repeatedly stated that the locations cited by the agency were cleared at the UN “once and for all” at the time of signing the JCPOA in 2015. Furthermore, it maintaned that the IAEA resolution declaring the presence of uranium traces at the so-called undeclared sites is based on fabricated inputs provided by Israel in order to weaken its cooperation with the IAEA.

Iran’s nuclear agency chief Mohammad Eslami said over weekend that Tehran’s nuclear enrichment capacity has “more than doubled in its entire history”. At the same time, its uranium enrichment program is meant for peaceful purposes and manufacturing a bomb is ’forbidden as per the Islamic law.’

Moscow's Ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzia has said that although there are "no insurmountable problems" on the way to restore the JCPOA, but attempts to build up pressure on Tehran may “negate prospects for restoration of the deal.”