US to regret any nuclear deal violation: Iran's Rouhani

The Iranian president made the remarks in New Delhi on Saturday while addressing a meeting with researchers and intellectuals of the Indian-based Observer Research Foundation (ORF) about the Islamic Republic's foreign policy priorities.
 
He said Iran would remain committed to the nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as long as other sides took no action to violate it.
 
    "If the US violates this pact, we will see that it will regret it. Do not doubt this," Rouhani said, adding that even the American people would soon express their strong protest against any JCPOA breach.
 
He expressed hope the region and the world would never witness a day that the JCPOA is violated.
 
The Iranian president said seven countries have agreed on the deal while the United Nations Security Council has endorsed it.
 
Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – the US, France, Britain, Russia and China – plus Germany signed the nuclear agreement on July 14, 2015 and started implementing it on January 16, 2016.
 
Under the JCPOA, Iran undertook to put limits on its nuclear program in exchange for the removal of nuclear-related sanctions imposed against Tehran.
 
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly described the JCPOA, which was negotiated under his predecessor Barack Obama, as “the worst and most one-sided transaction Washington has ever entered into,” a characterization he often used during his presidential campaign, and threatened to tear it up.
 
The American head of state has repeatedly claimed that Iran’s missile program is in violation of UNSC Resolution 2231, which endorses the JCPOA.
 
Trump has also complained that the JCPOA-related restrictions have an expiration date and that underscores the need to toughen the "embarrassing" deal.
 
Rouhani said on February 10 the US would make a "big strategic mistake" if it decided to pull out of the agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program.
 
Speaking during a meeting with a group of ambassadors and heads of foreign organizations in Tehran, Rouhani added that the world would see that Washington's withdrawal from the nuclear deal would be the "US’ biggest folly in its political relations with the world and particularly with our region."
 
Miscalculations, root cause of US hostilities towards Iran
 
Elsewhere in his Saturday remarks, the Iranian chief executive further said miscalculations were the root cause of the ongoing US hostilities toward Iran.
 
He stressed that the US had made repeated miscalculations since the very first day of the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, saying Washington decided to sabotage the revolution but it was forced to express its regret on several occasions.
 
Despite all the losses the US has faced because of these miscalculations, now another person has assumed office who seeks to hatch a new plot, Rouhani noted in reference to Trump.
 
    The president said, "The outcome of such miscalculations was that the US has failed to adopt appropriate policies vis-à-vis Iran."
 
Rouhani started a three-day visit of India at the invitation of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with an initial stop in the southern city of Hyderabad on Thursday. He arrived in New Delhi on Friday.
 
The Iranian president and Indian prime minister on Saturday expressed readiness to expand relations between their countries in all areas.
 
During the visit, the two sides signed 15 documents enabling the expansion of cooperation in various areas.