Iran has condemned the statement by France, Germany and the UK made earlier today as "unconstructive" and threatening the prospects of negotiations on restoring the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, also known as the Iran nuclear deal).
"It is sad that three European states took a step towards Israel's policy, which seeks to foil the [nuclear] talks, by making this ill-concieved statement," Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said.
The diplomat lamented that the European states chose to come up with such a statement when negotiations are so close to success. Russian representative to the talks, Mikhail Ulyanov, echoed that sentiment, calling the three countries' statement "very untimely" and coming at a "critical moment" of negotiations.
Kanani added that should the talks to restore the JCPOA fail, the three countries will bear the responsibility.
The UK, France and Germany earlier expressed concern over Iran's commitment to restoring the JCPOA. They said that Tehran raised issues regarding its responsibilities under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the agreement signed with the IAEA. Iran previously scaled back its cooperation with the IAEA after the latter declared having found nuclear material remains at the sites that were not supposed to store them.
The Islamic Republic accused the agency of politicizing its work and reminded it that Tehran unilaterally scaled back on its JCPOA commitments, including in regards to IAEA inspections in response to the US re-imposing sanctions in 2018.