Iran's Foreign Minister: 'We Won't Renegotiate Nuclear Deal'

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has warned that if the United States and other world powers insist on trying to change the 2015 nuclear deal, the nation may decide to withdraw altogether.

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"Iran will not renegotiate what was agreed upon years ago and has been implemented," Zarif said in a YouTube video address on Thursday.

U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that if Germany, France and Britain – Europe's signatory countries – failed to "fix" the "terrible flaws" in the accord, by May 12 the United States would likely rescind from the agreement and reimplement sanctions against Iran.

Since French President Emmanuel Macron's three-day visit to Washington in April, he and his European colleagues have been leaning toward amending the accord to align with Trump's wishes: nuclear inspections in Iran for an indefinite time frame, rather than until the currently agreed 2025.

"It now appears that... some Europeans have been offering more concessions from our pocket," Zarif said. "This appeasement entails a new deal that would include matters we all decided to exclude at the outset of our negotiations."

The foreign minister went on to accuse Trump of having "consistently violated the nuclear deal, particularly by bullying others to prevent businesses from returning to Iran."

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the Iran deal is formally known, was signed by the leaders of the United States, Russia, China, Germany, France and Britain three years ago to control Iran's ability to create nuclear weapons in exchange for lifting long-held economic sanctions that had strangled the Persian country.

Tehran agreed to drastically decrease its number of uranium centrifuges and the amount and purity of its enriched uranium.

Iran also agreed to have the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency conduct full scale, regular inspections of its national nuclear facilities. The United Nations and other nuclear weapons watchdogs consistently report that Iran is in full compliance with the deal it signed since inspections began.

Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Thursday on state television: "Even if U.S. allies, especially the Europeans, try to revise the deal, one of our options will be withdrawing from it."

Zarif said: "Let me make it absolutely clear and once and for all: we (will not) renegotiate or add to a deal we have already implemented in good faith.

"To put it in real estate terms: when you buy a house and move your family in, or demolish it to build a skyscraper, you cannot come back two years later and renegotiate the price."