EU defends Iran's nuclear activities, opposes renegotiation

The European Union on Tuesday defended the peaceful nuclear activities of Iran and opposed renegotiating the nuclear agreement, signed in July 2015 between Tehran and six major powers, including the US.

The official IRNA news agency reported that the secretary general of the European External Action Service (EEAS), Helga Schmid, underlined at a seminar in the city of Isfahan that a renegotiation of the nuclear agreement is impossible, Efe news agency reported.

The nuclear pact -- signed between Iran and the P5+1 Group (the US, Russia, Britain, France, China and Germany) and the European Union -- limits Tehran's atomic programme in exchange for the lifting of international economic sanctions against Tehran.

Schmid advocated cooperation with Iran, as did the European Commission's director general for energy, Dominique Ristori.

Ristori stated that the EU would support Iran's peaceful nuclear activities and that the EU would improve cooperation on nuclear energy with Iran.

Both European leaders participated on Tuesday in a seminar on nuclear cooperation in Isfahan, following the third round of high-level political dialogue between Iran and the EU held on Monday in Tehran.

In that seminar, Iranian Atomic Energy Agency spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi warned that Tehran is closely monitoring the US Congress and that any measure against the nuclear pact would isolate Washington.

On October 13, US President Donald Trump threatened to abandon the agreement if its "faults" were not corrected through an international renegotiation or US Congress legislation.

--IANS

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