Iran Press/ Iran news: Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Ghassemi said European countries should not link a payment mechanism they have announced to safeguard trade with the Islamic Republic known as 'INSTEX' to the country’s joining the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which has incurred domestic opposition.
“Principally, they were not and are not supposed to establish a relation between the mechanism and other issues, such as the FATF,” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman told Fars News Agency on Monday.
“[Establishment of] the mechanism has been among their inherent responsibilities towards saving the nuclear deal,” he said, adding, “If there is a party, which should lay conditions, it is Iran, which should stipulate its terms.”
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The UK, France, and Germany, three of the European signatories to the 2015 nuclear agreement, issued a joint statement on January 31, announcing the launch of the long-awaited direct non-dollar payment mechanism meant to protect their trade ties with the country in the face of the United States sanctions.
On May 8, 2018, Trump called the nuclear accord - or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as it is formally known - a "horrible, one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made" and withdraw from the deal. Washington afterward returned the sanctions that it had lifted under the accord.
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The European signatories, though, issued a statement afterward, reasserting their commitment to the JCPOA.
The European side has asked Iran to join the FATF before the financial mechanism, officially called the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX), takes force.
On October 7 last year, Iran's Parliament approved four bills put forward by the government to meet standards set by the FATF. The Guardian Council of the Constitution, which was supposed to decide whether those will become laws, however, dismissed one controversial bill on combating “terror financing.”
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The oversight body said it had found "flaws and ambiguities" in the draft legislation.
Iraqi soil, not Trump's base
Separately, Ghassemi reacted to earlier remarks by US President Donald Trump, who had said he planned to keep troops in Iraq to spy on Iran.
“Iraq is no place for Trump and the US forces to conduct surveillance against Iran,” the spokesman said.
The Iraqi government and people, he added, would not let the US turn the country’s soil into a base it can use against the Islamic Republic.
“Basically, they should not have come to Iraq in the first place. Their continued stay in this independent country is likewise a strategic mistake and illegitimate. Trump’s remarks and his attempt at justifying the prolonged presence are utterly unacceptable,” Ghassemi concluded.
The reaction came after Trump told CBS that US troops would leave Syria and Afghanistan but stay on in Iraq, partly "to be looking a little bit at Iran."
The Iranian official, meanwhile, said the US president’s comments “cannot be counted on. His words are usually of a type that should not be taken very seriously, whether they have to do with the departure from Syria, [military] presence elsewhere in the world, or the domestic policies that he adopts.”
Furthermore; Iraqi President Barham Salih said on Monday that US president Donald Trump did not ask Iraq permission to watch Iran.
Salih added that the Iraqi constitution rejects the use of Iraq as a base for hitting or attacking a neighboring country.104/203
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