Zarif made these remarks in an interview with Foreign Policy. The interview was published on Thursday.
Regarding the E3's attempt to exploit the Snapback Mechanism, Zarif said: “Let’s not confuse domestic and foreign policy. I think what the E3 are trying to do is, first of all, unfounded because Iran was observing fully the JCPOA, even a year after Trump left it. Europe failed to implement its own commitments. After Trump withdrew from the JCPOA, the Europeans urged us not to stop. They made 11 commitments in two sessions, in June and September of 2018, to me personally. They were not able to even implement one of them. They decided to create a 19th-century barter agreement with Iran. They were not even able to do that.”
“Now, I don’t know what audacity they have in order to try to use the dispute resolution mechanism. It’s not called snapback in the JCPOA or the [United Nations] Security Council. It’s called “dispute resolution mechanism.” Iran resorted to the dispute resolution mechanism during the time that I was foreign minister, many times. We went through the entire process. The Europeans promised to implement some of their own commitments, let alone American commitments, and they failed. And that is why we took remedial measures. They cannot take remedial measures against remedial methods, legally speaking.”
He added: “The timing is interesting, too, because a few weeks ago, as I wrote in Foreign Policy, they were basically applauding Israeli violation of international law attacking Iranian sites. I mean, the German chancellor said that Israel is doing “dirty work … for [all of] us.” So, which option? They use war, and then they use diplomacy, and then they use mechanisms to resolve disputes. This is indicative of bad faith.”
“Moving away from legalities, what good does it do to them? What did President [Donald] Trump gain by withdrawing from JCPOA? Do we live in a safer world today? Will Europe live in a safer world if they use this dispute resolution mechanism in bad faith in order to go back to Security Council resolutions that we all decided to stop? What are they trying to gain? They try to support Israel. Some of them, including the E3 that are trying to use this mechanism, even went as far as calling it self-defense. They should go back to their policy drawing board and see what this is going to gain them. What are they going to get? I think there are diplomatic ways of moving forward. I wrote an article in the Guardian talking about a Middle East network for nonproliferation and nuclear cooperation. I wrote in your paper talking about a nonaggression pact.”
Zarif also touched the issue of the Israeli war of aggression against Iran, saying, “The 12-day war occurred just two days before my friends in the Foreign Ministry were supposed to go for a new round of negotiations with their American counterparts. It created an image in Iran that negotiations for the United States were just a pretext for an attack, which is very damaging. From my perspective, I believe in diplomacy. This was very damaging to diplomacy in general.
“Secondly, it was a premeditated attack, not only against military and nuclear targets but against innocent civilians. Many innocent civilians were killed. Military leaders were not targeted in their offices or on the war front, but they were targeted at home, when they were sleeping with the children and spouses. According to what I know of international law, that constitutes a war crime. Nuclear scientists, as well as other scientists, were murdered only because they were scientists. This is an extremely dangerous precedent that these people were murdered.”
IRNA