NEW YORK (Dispatches) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says missing the opportunity to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is a “huge mistake,” noting the parties that destroyed the multilateral agreement bear responsibility to bring it back to life.

Speaking to reporters after chairing a UN Security Council meeting, he said an agreement had already been reached on restoring the U.S.-abandoned Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), but the Europeans are no longer enthusiastic about it and the U.S. seeks another option.

“We assume that the agreement to resume it (the JCPOA) was reached quite a while ago. Now, European countries have lost their enthusiasm for some reason, and U.S. officials say via different channels on the conditions of anonymity that another option should be sought. It appears to me that it would be a huge mistake to skip the chance of resuming this deal,” he said.

The top Russian diplomat also said that the JCPOA revival “does not depend on Iran, Russia, or China” at the current stage, adding, however, that “the ones who destroyed it must now bring it back to life.”

The efforts aimed at setting “new requirements” for resurrecting the nuclear deal “complicate the process and reflect the policy of grasping unilateral advantages through bargaining or blackmail,” Lavrov asserted.

Iran proved the peaceful nature of its nuclear program to the world by signing the JCPOA with six world powers. However, Washington’s unilateral withdrawal in May 2018 and its subsequent re-imposition of sanctions against Tehran left the future of the deal in limbo.
Negotiations kicked off in the Austrian capital city of Vienna in April 2021, with the intention of removing anti-Iran sanctions and examining the United States’ seriousness in rejoining the accord.
The talks, however, have been at a standstill since August 2022 due to Washington’s insistence on not removing all the sanctions and failure to offer the necessary guarantees that it will not exit the deal again.