Ex-IRGC chief: Iran to leave nuclear weapons treaty if US ditches deal
Former military commander Mohsen Rezaei has said that if the United States reneges on the nuclear deal, Iran could exit the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
A former commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said that if the United States walks away from the nuclear deal, Iran could respond by exiting the international treaty to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
Talking to reporters on April 26, Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Expediency Council, deemed as “very serious” the warnings issued by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif about the United States exiting the nuclear deal with Iran. Zarif was the lead nuclear negotiator for the deal, formally the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The agreement, between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany, was signed in July 2015, but President Donald Trump has stated his intention to walk away from what he calls a “bad deal” made by his predecessor, Barack Obama.
“In the case of the US exiting the nuclear deal,” Rezaei said, “we will exit the NPT,” referring to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the arms limitation and disarmament agreement signed by 191 countries. Only four United Nations member states have not signed the treaty. Three of them — Israel, India and Pakistan — are known to have nuclear weapons. North Korea, which has nuclear capabilities but lacks a delivery system, withdrew from the NPT in 2003.
“We incurred heavy costs in the nuclear deal, and we are not ready to have our costs remain pointless and incur new costs,” Rezaei asserted. “Our exit from the NPT, according to its provisions, would be legal.”
