As Iran Berates US to Mark Second Anniversary of Nuclear Deal, Critics Warn of ‘Nuclear Armed Genoci

Iran’s foreign minister marked the second anniversary of the 2015 nuclear deal on Friday by accusing the US of undermining the agreement.

“We expect all the sides to abide by their commitments, but the US has remained committed to the agreement at the least level; it has not respected and supported the spirit of the deal by adopting wrong approaches and policies,” said Javad Zarif, shortly after arriving in New York for a UN summit on development.

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Saeed Ghasseminejad – an expert on Iran at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) think-tank in  Washington, DC – said that the immediate effect of the JCPOA had been to “rescue the Islamic regime in Tehran from an imminent and total economic collapse.”

“[Former president] Barack Obama and [former secretary of state] John Kerry gave the clerics in Tehran whatever they wanted just to have a foreign policy legacy,” Ghasseminejad said. “Their legacy will be a nuclear armed genocidal regime.”

Ghasseminejad argued that Iran’s destabilizing regional activities – such as its ballistic missile tests, its military intervention in neighboring Syria and its backing for terrorist proxies like Hezbollah – had increased since the deal was first announced.

“What we have seen so far is peanuts in comparison to what will happen once the regime reaches its goal of going nuclear,” Ghasseminejad warned.

“They will cheat incrementally, until they feel comfortable that they have all the required pieces in place, then they will go nuclear and become another North Korea, but a more powerful and dangerous one,” he stated.

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