Macron: The Europeans will not give up their refusal to activate sanctions in the Iranian nuclear file

French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday before the United Nations that France, Germany and Britain will not "give up" their refusal to support the re-introduction of UN sanctions against Iran, after the United States took the initiative to do so.

"France, along with its partners Germany and Britain, will continue to demand full implementation of the 2015 Vienna Agreement on the Iranian nuclear program, and" will not accept the violations committed by Iran, "the French president said in a video address to the General Assembly.

However, he corrected, "Nevertheless, we will not compromise on activating a mechanism that the United States is not in a position to do on its own after leaving the agreement," because that would "harm the unity of the Security Council and the integrity of its decisions, with the risk of escalating tensions in the region."

Last Saturday, the United States unilaterally announced the reinstatement of UN sanctions on Iran, after lifting them in 2015, in exchange for an Iranian pledge not to seek possession of a nuclear weapon.

This step was quickly condemned by Moscow and the European parties that signed the nuclear deal.

Iran's insistence

Macron stressed that the "strategy of maximum pressure" adopted by US President Donald Trump after he decided to withdraw from the agreement in 2018 "has so far not led to an end to Iran's destabilizing activities, nor to a guarantee that it will not be able to acquire nuclear weapons."

He stressed, "The necessity to build a useful framework (...) that is, the ability to complete the 2015 agreement, first in time to ensure that Iran will never obtain a nuclear weapon for a long time, but also with the assurance that we will respond to Iran's ballistic activity, and also to what it is doing to destabilize it." In the region. "

For his part, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told the United Nations General Assembly that the United States could not impose "neither negotiations nor war" on his country.

In a video message to the United Nations General Assembly, Rouhani said, "Iran is not a bargaining chip in the United States' elections nor in its domestic policy ... any American administration after the upcoming elections will have no choice but to surrender to the resilience of the Iranian nation."