Abbas Mousavi Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Seyyed Abbas Mousavi has welcomed France's efforts to ease tensions between Iran and US, as well as efforts by Paris to keep the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) alive.

Iran Press/Iran news: "France is a signatory to the JCPOA and we consider their effort as part of their duty to keep the JCPOA agreement alive," Abbas Mousavi said on Wednesday, according to an Iran Press report.

French President Emmanuel Macron has sent his top diplomatic adviser Emmanuel Bonne to Iran seeking to find ways to salvage the nuclear deal. Bonne is due to arrive in Tehran on Wednesday, and he is expected to meet with senior Iranian officials.

Spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry said the Paris-based transactions channel, named INSTEX is a preliminary step to implementation of Europe's commitments to the July 2015 nuclear deal.

"Tehran has already announced that the INSTEX channel (Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges) is preliminary to Europe's commitments to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action," Mousavi said.

He added: "INSTEX may be one of the issues on the agenda at talks with the French side."

When the United States left the 2015 nuclear deal on 8 May 2018, the Europeans had promised to honour 11 commitments in different areas, Mousavi said.

Although they promised to be faithful to their commitments to bring JCPOA's economic benefit to Iran, they have failed to keep their promises up until now.

INSTEX is a mechanism for facilitating Europe's business and trade with Iran, and is also considered a preliminary step to implementation of Europe's 11 commitments; however, the Europeans seem to have been frozen in the first step, which is INSTEX.

No practical measures have been taken yet towards launch of INSTEX, Mousavi noted. 101/211/205

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