Debate: Situation in Iran
Date: WEDNESDAY, 7 OCTOBER 2020
Speaker: Josep Borrell Fontelles
Language: EN

So to try to keep the JCPOA alive – although, as Mr Bütikofer has said, it is very weak because the withdrawal of the US is certainly something that jeopardises its existence and the continuity – to keep it working, even at a lower regime, is not contradictory with the importance that we have to give to the situation of human rights in Iran. I know that this is something that all Parliament is very concerned about and I can assure you that we will continue working in order to put our concerns, our rejection of the executions and detentions that have been mentioned here today before the Iranian authorities. We will do that in collaboration with the German Embassy in Tehran, which is currently acting as our local representation since we don’t have a European delegation on the ground. And Mr Bütikofer is also right: we have to look further at whatever is going to happen in the US after the next elections. It is not sure that the JCPOA will survive. We have to look for a new agreement. Is it possible? Remember how difficult it was to reach this agreement, how many years of tough work were required to rebuild the agreement in order to adapt it to the new circumstances, and even enlarging it could be good, if possible. It will depend very much on the political landscape in January next year. In the meantime, about the arms embargo: I want to stress that we Europeans will continue to put our arms embargo in place. Our arms embargo, the comprehensive arms embargo of the European Union – not the JCPOA arms embargo – will continue into 2023. But we cannot say that we fight to keep the JCPOA alive and, at the same time, to impose an arms embargo on the JCPOA itself – what is considered part of it – and ban. On that, we cannot share the position of the US as they didn’t share 13 Members of the Security Council. All I know is we are trying to do our best in order to increase trade with Iran. It is very difficult because the American sanctions are very powerful, but the Iran deal is not just a nuclear deal. It is a dual task. It is a nuclear deal on the one side and an economic deal on the other, and one thing goes with the other. We cannot pretend that Iran fulfils all its nuclear obligations and at the same time not get any kind of reward on the economic side. This is a delicate balance. Let’s try to work on two things at the same time: the nuclear agreement and human rights. We will continue fighting to keep the nuclear agreement alive and working and at the same time we will continue working in order to make the Iranian authorities aware that respect for human rights is a  I think that this achievement for European diplomacy, which took a lot of effort from Javier Solana until Ms Mogherini – a lot of people have been working on that – deserves to be preserved, deserves to be continued, deserves to be facilitating a non-nuclear Iran, and it also gives us leverage to engage with Iran on these other very important issues, such as human rights, which I know the Members of this Parliament are very attached to, as I am. You can count on the External Action Service to engage on this issue. The two of them can go in parallel; one things doesn’t prevent the other. Thank you very much, Members of the Parliament, for your support and for this long and moving session.