In a sermon to worshipers on Friday, Tehran interim Friday Prayers leader Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati pointed to the different viewpoints regarding the status of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) recently finalized by Iran and the P5+1 group of countries, and said some say it is a treaty and thus requires the approval of the Iranian Parliament (Majlis). If they are right, he said, the Iranian administration should submit the agreement in the form of a draft bill to the Parliament. Others, he said, believe that it is up to Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) to declare its opinion on the JCPOA. He said he agreed with the first group, but called on the pertinent authorities to define in the quickest manner possible the JCPOA's precise legal status. Ayatollah Jannati also described the nuclear issue as a "national" one, saying it should not be used to score political points. Elsewhere in his remarks, the senior cleric hailed the considerable achievements of Iranian nuclear scientists and officials over the past years. Representatives from Iran and the P5+1 group of countries – the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China plus Germany – succeeded in finalizing the text of the JCPOA in the Austrian capital, Vienna, on July 14. The latest round of the talks saw 18 days of intense negotiations and all-nighters that capped an overall of 23 months of negotiations between Iran and the six other countries. Under the JCPOA, limits will be put on Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for, among other things, the removal of all economic and financial bans, against the Islamic Republic.
