MOSCOW, Nov. 8 (Xinhua) -- As a response to U.S. exit from the Iran nuclear deal, Iran's withdrawing from the 2015 agreement would erase the long-standing efforts of the world community to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue and will have "deplorable" consequences, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Friday.
On Thursday, Iran resumed uranium enrichment at its Fordow nuclear facility, a further step to scale down its commitments to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in response to the U.S. withdrawal in May 2018 and re-imposition of sanctions against the Islamic republic, as well as to the Europeans' slowness in facilitating its banking transactions and oil exports.
"A possible collapse of the agreement would be the result of a unilateral illegitimate exit of the United States from the deal and inability of European partners to guarantee the conditions that were proposed to Iran," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a news briefing.
Zakharova recalled that the negotiation process that preceded the conclusion of the JCPOA took four years, and expressed doubt that this path could be repeated.
She also recalled that Russia has been calling for a long time on the JCPOA partners to mobilize and overcome challenges that impede the implementation of the agreement.
Zakharova noted that the U.S. policy of confrontation with Iran is destructive as well as short-sighted.
Without Tehran's participation, it is impossible to build a strong regional security architecture in the Middle East, or to stabilize the situation in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other neighboring countries, she said.
Washington looks at the struggle against terrorism through the prism of its geopolitical goals, using double standards and dividing international terrorist organizations into bad ones, which oppose the United States, and those who do the same but do not openly call it an enemy, Zakharova said.
Russia has never seen a terrorist threat in Iran, she said, adding that Iranians themselves have repeatedly been the victims of attacks by extremist groups. Enditem
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