MOSCOW (TASS) — Tehran should honour its commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on the Iranian nuclear program, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with RT Arabic, Al Arabiya and Sky News Arabia TV channels on Sunday ahead of his visit to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

“My opinion is that Iran should better be committed to the letter and spirit of this deal”, the Russian president said.

Putin recalled that under the JCPOA, which limits the Iranian nuclear program, Tehran made certain commitments. The Russian leader called on his partners to be candid and not to turn a blind eye to the contradictions between the Middle East region’s states.

Otherwise, this conversation would be not interesting and irrelevant, he noted. In this context, Putin mentioned the contradictions among Iran, Israel, Iran and the United States. “I believe that we should seek to iron out these contradictions and search for the ways out these challenging situations”, he said.

“But if we think that regional states have contradictions with Iran, then who can judge in this issue on whether Iran is committed to the JCPOA or not?” Putin said, stressing that a judge should be neutral. “This is first. Professionalism is second. And it should be recognized by the international community. And there is such a judge. This is the International Atomic Energy Agency”, Putin noted.

“And it says in public, without hesitating, it says directly that Iran is fully meeting its obligations”, the president said, noting that it was “not fair to make claims against Iran over something that it is not doing.”

“This is not very fruitful because when any person or any country faces such injustice they start behaving in another way, not the way it was put on paper”, he explained. “And if commitments on them are not honoured, why should they meet them?”

Iran, the UN Security Council permanent members (Russia, the UK, China, the US, France) and Germany signed the JCPOA in 2015. The deal restricted Tehran’s nuclear development in exchange for lifting UN sanctions and unilateral restrictions imposed by the US and the EU. On May 8, 2018, US President Donald Trump declared Washington’s withdrawal from the JCPOA. A year after, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced that Iran was suspending some its obligations under the nuclear deal. Iran said other parties to the deal, namely the Europeans, were not fully meeting their economic commitments and therefore this deal was senseless.