 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we are joined by Prabir Purkayastha to discuss the recent announcement made by Iran that said that the country has now increased the amount of uranium, low-enriched uranium possessed by the country has now surpassed the limits which was set in the Iran nuclear deal. So firstly Prabir, if we look at the more nitty gritties of the deal, the more details into the details of this deal, is this really true because what is being shown in the mainstream media right now is that Iran has violated the deal but is this true? Well, let us put it this way, violation of a deal can take place if there is a deal. The JCPOA, the basic agreement we are talking about, basically was between the United States and Iran and it had another five countries in it, the essentially P5 is the one side including the United States plus Germany and then of course other party was Iran. But all of this was really an agreement between the United States and Iran and the other countries, the five countries which is the six countries on one side, they were there to essentially guarantee that both sides behave as it were and they therefore also are a part of the agreement that in case anything happens they will also have to take responsibilities. The United States has walked out of the agreement. Having walked out of the agreement, it says Iran must still be held to the agreement. Now this means what we would call in conventional childhood playground style, head I will tell you lose. So this seems to be the argument which is being given. The second part to answer your question about what is the agreement, that agreement also provides one side religious on a part of the agreement and Iran made very clear that if the United States religious on certain parts of the agreement that these are the steps they will be forced to take. So this is one part of it that this is not in that sense a violation of agreement because this is also built into the clauses of the agreement what Iran would do if the US does something. The last part of this and I think this is very, very important for us to understand that United States has sanctioned Iran from exporting enriched uranium and heavy water. Now they what they have been doing is while they keep the centrifuges running before they hit the 300 kg limit set by the JCPOA agreement, the Iran agreement they would export these additional amounts and send it to Russia and the heavy water I believe they are sending to Oman where the Oman was holding an inventory of heavy water. Now after you have forbidden them to export, you have put that under sanctions what is it that you are asking Iran to do essentially stopping its enrichment program. Iran from the beginning in fact this is the mode of contention right through the Iran and US standoff that we have a right under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty for pursuing the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and therefore we have a right to enrich uranium for the purpose of various things including setting up power reactors but also for essentially what are called medical isotopes various other uses of this kind of products of uranium. So all of this, this is a right that the Iran was exercising right from the beginning and this right is there what United States wants to take away. US is very clear in what it is saying. It is saying that Iran must submit in total, must give up any possibility of dealing with the enrichment of uranium. It must deal with not deal with anything to do with nuclear shall we say technologies which include a whole bunch of other things not just shall we say power or bombs but also whole bunch of other things including as I said medicinal use. Then it must not have any rocket technology that it must not be able to have any missiles and at the last point that it is making these are statements both Trump and Pompeo have made that they should not also interfere in the region which means they should play no diplomatic role all military role in the region that means Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Israel of course will with conjunction with the NATO powers of course United States being the key one should be allowed a free hand in the region to destroy countries Libya, Syria, Iraq being three of the examples and Iran should not play any role resisting any of this. Essentially it is an argument you disarm and then we let you live. Now the question is if you disarm whether you will be allowed to live or you will be invaded and occupied nobody knows and effectively at any point of time Iran to be thrown at the mercies of Israel, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates under the ages of the United States is not an option that Iran can exercise at any moment. So you know this is therefore to be as I said the childhood bully example comes to mind that you have to surrender or else if you surrender then of course I can beat you every day morning and evening and we know what Israel is doing in Gaza so they fire bombs and if the Palestinians living there retaliate any form even protest on the borders peacefully they are shot and bombed. So this is the peace that Israel wants to impose on West Asia in large this is the peace that Saudi Arabia at the moment is imposing on Yemen and successfully hopefully. So this is the peace that United States the NATO allies and the shall be say Israel and its allies in the region want to impose on Iran and this obviously is not acceptable to any country. How will a why should a country surrender after having already negotiated one peace in which they gave up a lot you know 98% of the low enriched uranium which they had in the stockpile they exported out out of 16,000 centrifuges they brought the number of centrifuges down to 5000 you know or I think 6000 out of which 5000 were operational. So they took huge hits to the nuclear enrichment program in order to have peace and at that time we said well you know this is at least a possibility of peace and after Trump walked out we've been waiting to see how far the United States wants to take it to war. Trabi can you also talk about more about the role of the other countries in the deal you mentioned before that of course US is not the only country there are five European countries as well which are part of the deal have they really played their role properly in terms of you know over monitoring the behavior of the two countries and what the US is currently doing. Let's put it this way the four European countries plus China so that makes it five and three of them are what would be called called European Union countries not so great Britain United Kingdom France and Germany these are the three European countries which are a part of the deal. Now one of the things that was originally created that sanctions been that Iran cannot do a whole bunch of things so Trump's withdrawal meant sanction on Iran essentially sanctions on their oil export which is one of their major exports. Once you start sanctioning oil then obviously Iran is going to be hit in its economic activities because it can't import a whole lot of things which it was paying through sale of oil. Now the three countries which I think four countries which are main consumers of oil one is Japan, India, China and Turkey these are the four countries which are major consumers of Iran's oil so they are at the moment finding it difficult because the threats of your sanctions that any Iran oil that you buy it not only is this country itself comes at the certain scrutiny or sanctions but any company that is involved it could be the tanker it could be the insurance company it could be the bank through which the transaction is taking place it could be any of their affiliates so the sort of net for sanctions spreads far and wide and therefore most companies do not want to take the risk so Iran not only is not able to sell its oil but is also not able to sell other goods or buy other goods because companies which had already reached an agreement with them from Europe are not willing to do any business with Iran because of the fear of sanctions there will be individually sanctioned and the European countries have failed to put any instrument in place they have created a non-dollar based exchange of currency that currency I mean agreements or export imports between two countries could be settled directly and not the swift system which the United States today controls and it did not if any dollar denomination takes place again the United States by its own laws comes into the picture so they have been trying to do non-dollar denominated exchange transactions but that transaction system has not worked because a hardy the transactions taking place so it seems it is something for show that they have done something but it has not achieved anything so this is what Iran is reacting to that if you claim we should remain in the JCPOA if you claim you have a stake in it and you also want to be a partner in the JCPOA minus the United States what are you doing with respect to the sanctions are you willing to take our oil are you willing to take our other goods are you willing to sell other goods if you are not then saying you have a payment mechanism which you have set up which is not doing anything is not helping so they have waited almost now more than six to eight months for the European Union to react to this and I think they have put the European Union under notice much earlier that if you don't intervene to settle this issue then we would have to take steps so their steps is of course within the JCPOA still while transactions are not United States actions are not but the pressure is now on the European Union are you willing to put money where your mouth is or are you going to say being very sanctimonious that you guys have to observe the deal but we really helpless we can't do anything so it becomes an unilateral shall we say responsibility of Iran not to do anything to upset quote unquote the JCPOA limits while the United States is free to sanction them any way they want and is they can pull out of the deal without any consequences for themselves while Iran has all the consequences of supposedly violating the deal which as we have explained is not true but I think the really the issue is it's not only the European Union but it is also China Russia India Turkey Japan which have to decide whether this this this kind of unilateralism of the United States in which they actually have international agreements and walk out of it what is the responsibility of the rest of the world for that of course European Union countries these three countries of the European Union who have been the signatories to JCPOA have really much more responsibility but the larger international question remains how do you address a rogue shall we say superpower which is what the United States is and wants to impose its rules on others but it makes up those rules as it goes along yeah so thank you for joining us today and that's all the time we have today keep watching news click