Iran’s government is telling the U.S. Senate it has no say in negotiations over its nuclear program and that any deal will be governed by international law, not U.S. law.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif dismissed a letter from 47 Senate Republicans to Iran warning against a deal negotiated by President Barack Obama without support from the Republican Congress.
“I should bring one important point to the attention of the authors and that is, the world is not the United States, and the conduct of inter-state relations is governed by international law, and not by US domestic law,” Zarif said in a statement reported by Iran’s Fars News Agency.
“The authors may not fully understand that in international law, governments represent the entirety of their respective states, are responsible for the conduct of foreign affairs, are required to fulfill the obligations they undertake with other states and may not invoke their internal law as justification for failure to perform their international obligations.”
In the letter, the Senate Republicans said that any pact without Congressional support could be reversed by the next U.S. president.
“I wish to enlighten the authors that if the next administration revokes any agreement with ‘the stroke of a pen,’ as they boast, it will have simply committed a blatant violation of international law,” Zarif said.
“A change of administration does not in any way relieve the next administration from international obligations undertaken by its predecessor in a possible agreement about Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.”
Zarif said he wanted to “enrich the knowledge of the authors to recognize that according to international law, Congress may not ‘modify the terms of the agreement at any time’ as they claim, and if Congress adopts any measure to impede its implementation, it will have committed a material breach of the US obligations.”