Washington is inciting Tehran to take radical steps on the Iranian nuclear deal, Russia's Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov said in a statement, published on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website.

Axar.az reports citing TASS.

The diplomat noted that the US has not just pulled out from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on the Iranian nuclear program, but it seeks to undermine it by blocking the implementation of this agreement’s economic part.

"By using the methods of blatant blackmail and intimidation, the US seeks to force other countries to curtail legitimate trade and economic ties with Iran, primarily in the oil and banking sectors," the diplomat said. Actually, Washington is trying to limit their sovereignty and force them to abandon their assistance in implementing the JCPOA in line with the UN Security Council’s Resolution 2231, Ulyanov said.

Moreover, since May, the United States has extended such a destructive policy to certain elements of the nuclear part of this agreement, threatening with sanctions for exporting excessive amounts of enriched uranium and heavy water from Iran, he noted.

"In fact, Washington pushes Tehran out of a nuclear deal and provokes it to take radical retaliatory steps," the Russian permanent representative stressed. "We urge the US to reconsider its line towards torpedoing the major nuclear non-proliferation achievement, allowing the international community to be confident in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program."

According to him, Moscow understands Iran’s decision to stop implementing some its commitments under the JCPOA, but at the same time it urges Tehran "not to succumb to provocations and refrain from further escalation, with the understanding that the remaining participants of the deal will make every effort to restore the balance between the nuclear and economic elements of this agreement." "For our part, we will continue practical work in this direction," the diplomat said.

"We are also calling on other economic partners of Iran not to succumb to external pressure, bearing in mind that in current circumstances commercial ties with Iran also have an important political dimension as a contribution to the implementation of the UN Security Council Resolution 2231, strengthening the nuclear non-proliferation regime and also preventing the growing threat of destabilization in the Middle East region," he noted.

On May 8, 2018 US President Donald Trump announced that Washington was withdrawing from the JCPOA on the Iranian nuclear program, a 2015 deal that limited Iran’s nuclear development in exchange for the cancellation of the UN, US and EU sanctions. A year later, Tehran declared that it would stop complying with the deal’s terms on the limits of low-enriched uranium and heavy water. Iran also announced plans to stop modernizing the Arak heavy water nuclear reactor if the nuclear deal’s participants failed to offset the US sanctions within 60 days.