Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht Ravanchi on Sunday said that the nuclear agreement between Tehran and the six Western powers will come into force in early January.
“God willing, this job (implementation of the nuclear deal) will be fulfilled in the midst of (the Iranian month) Dey (December 22-January 20) and before the end of this (Iranian) month,” Takht Ravanchi told reporters in Tehran, according to the semiofficial Fars news agency.
Abbas Araqchi, another Iranian deputy foreign minister and senior negotiator, also told reporters that “God willing, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) will come into implementation by the end of month of Dey”.
The implementation of the deal comes despite a December 2 report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which concluded that Iran made a “coordinated” effort to develop nuclear weapons in the past, although the efforts apparently ended at an early stage.
According to the report, most of the dedicated work took place before 2003, though some parts continued until 2009.
The report repudiates the long-held Iranian claim that they have never desired nuclear weapons. In particular, it charges that the disputed Parchin military site was, in fact, a facility used for nuclear weapons research.
The UN watchdog also recently released a report which determined that Iran had violated the terms of its nuclear deal with the West by increasing its stockpile of low-enriched uranium in the past three months by 460.2 kilograms.
Earlier it was also revealed that Iran had stopped dismantling its centrifuges at the Natanz and Fordow uranium enrichment plants, breaching the nuclear deal that calls for the dismantling.
Despite its own violations of the deal, Iran last week accused the United States of breaching the deal when Congress decided to block visa-free travel by Iranian nationals or those who visited Iran.
After the move, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif underlined that the United States administration is responsible for resolving its internal disputes over the nuclear agreement with Iran.
