Iran aggressively destabilising Middle East: US

Team Udayavani, Mar 22, 2018, 10:10 AM IST

Washington: The Iranian regime is aggressively destabilising the Middle East and presenting a range of threats to peace and security in the region, the US said today. “When you look at Iran’s foreign and domestic policies, it’s impossible to argue that they are behaving constructively or with greater moderation in the last two years.

“In fact, quite the reverse. They are aggressively destabilising the Middle East and present a range of threats to peace and security,” said Brian Hook, the State Department Director for Policy Planning. In a telephonic briefing with reporters on the latest quarterly meeting of the Joint Commission of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Hook said he also requested a meeting with the Iranian delegation to demand the release of the American citizens that they have arbitrarily and unjustly detained.

Joint Commission is part of the JCPOA and it oversees the implementation of the Plan of Action that was reached in 2015 with the previous administration, and it meets on a regular basis to review Iran’s compliance with the JCPOA and to address concerns raised by member states. “They were productive meetings and we fulfilled what we set out to do. We are meeting our commitments under the JCPOA, and we continue to hold Iran strictly accountable for its commitments,” he said.

“One of the things they did in the meeting was to take stock of one of the key provisions of the JCPOA, which is that the Iran deal will positively contribute to regional and international peace and security. That is mentioned in the deal, and since it took over two years to negotiate and every word was weighed carefully,” he said.

“We take all of these provisions seriously, he added. Responding to questions, Hook said the Iranians had a number of complaints about licenses, especially around civil aviation licenses to Iran Air and other airlines. “And what I said to them was: You use your commercial airlines to move terrorists and weapons around the Middle East, including to Syria, and we will not issue licenses at the expense of our national security.

And so I encouraged them to make the kind of reforms to their civil aviation and to their economy that would then put us in a better position. But we are not going to be issuing licenses at the expense of our national security or at the expense of our allies,” he said. Hook said that US President Donald Trump has set forth a plan wherein he wants to give the Congress a role to address the range of threats that Iran presents.