Saudi Arabia, Gulf states must be consulted by US for entering JCPOA: Foreign Minister

President-elect Joe Biden must consult Gulf nations if the United States decides to re-enter the nuclear accord with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat asserted on December 6, warning, that dialogue was the ‘only path for a sustainable agreement’. Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud insisted that Biden must involve Iran's US-allied Arab neighbours in the process of rejoining the US Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), indirectly resonating concerns about Iran backed Houthis’ militarily aggression targeted at Yemen. Biden had stated that his incoming government can hold potential negotiations with Iran to reinstate the nuclear deal scrapped by the Trump administration to pressurize Iran into giving up nukes stockpile by slapping sanctions. 

Prince Faisal bin Farhan told reporters that Saudi Arabia wanted to be fully consulted, on the sidelines of the security conference in Bahrain’s Manama on Saturday. Further, in an interview with CNBC, Al-Saud said that Saudi Arabia seeks to partner with the US administration in the new agreement, for which, Trump's Iran policies had laid the groundwork. The Gulf involvement will not only monitor Iran's nuclear activity but also “regional malign activity,” Al-Saud told Hadley Gamble, in a televised interview, adding, that the new deal can be dubbed JCPOA++.

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'Limit' Iran's ballistic missile programs

Sitting US President Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018, citing, that it was the "worst deal in history.” Al-Saud said that the new deal can be entered with more conditions that can address Iran’s arming of Houthis militias in Yemen, and other armed groups in Iraq, Syria, or Lebanon. The new agreement must also limit Iran's ballistic missile programs and other arms programs, Saudi’s Foreign minister alleged. 

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani had earlier said in a press conference that Iran hopes the US would return to normalizing bilateral relations to the pre-Trump era and return to negotiations with the new president in the office. Rouhani condemned the outgoing president, Donald Trump on his foreign policy and said that he was looking forward to improving ties with US President-elect Joe Biden. The Iranian leader asserted that the new US President must “clearly condemn” Trump's “terrorist and anti-humanitarian policies”, adding, that his administration played defective politics for four years. 

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