Deputy Speaker of Parliament: Without the Leader's Defense, Nuclear Negotiators Would Have Been Executed for Treason

Masoud Pezeshkian, the Deputy Speaker of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, stated on Tuesday that if the Supreme Leader had not defended the nuclear negotiation team, they would have been arrested and executed as traitors. Speaking to reporters in Tabriz, Pezeshkian defended the members of the nuclear negotiation team, asserting that claiming the JCPOA was humiliating is disrespectful to the Leader. He emphasized that the JCPOA is the greatest achievement of the system. If the Leader had not signed the JCPOA, no power in the country would have dared to bring it to fruition, and his defense of the JCPOA and the nuclear team put critics in their place. Iran and six world powers reached an agreement last year on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which limited Iran's nuclear program in exchange for lifting nuclear sanctions against Iran. Meanwhile, some conservatives criticize the JCPOA, arguing that this agreement has not resolved Iran's economic problems and that the U.S., as one of the main parties in the nuclear negotiations, has not taken necessary actions to facilitate Iran's economic relations with the international community. Pezeshkian stated that without the JCPOA, not a single Iranian ship would dock at any port, and we would have had no means to trade with other countries. He pointed out that before the JCPOA was signed, 'the small country of Qatar was taking 4 trillion rials daily of Iran's gas share in the Persian Gulf, and Iraq was taking our share in joint oil fields, and why have we not been able to stop it until now?' He stressed that without the JCPOA, the country's situation would have been uncertain, and we would not even have been able to import medicine. He challenged JCPOA critics by asking what alternative they have if they do not accept the JCPOA. The Deputy Speaker also stated, 'You cannot run a country with slogans and shouts; the fact that the U.S. is untrustworthy in implementing the JCPOA is separate; however, under the JCPOA, we are currently interacting with the world, and the groundwork for international exchanges has been prepared.'