Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on September 29 called on Europe, Russia and China to remain committed to the nuclear deal with Tehran if the Trump administration pulls out of the multilateral agreement. Any subsequent sanctions from the US should be defied, he said.

Speaking to the Guardian and the Financial Times, Zarif said the only way Iran would be persuaded to continue to observe the limits on its civil nuclear programme would be if the other nuclear agreement signatories – the UK, France, Germany, Russia and China – remained committed to its terms and held fast against any American penalties. “Europe should lead,” Zarif said in an interview in the Iranian UN ambassador’s residence in New York, where he journeyed to attend the UN General Assembly.

If Europe followed Washington’s lead, the deal, formally named the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), would be wrecked, meaning Iran would later emerge with more advanced nuclear technology than before the agreement was struck in Vienna in 2015, Zarif reportedly said. However, he insisted that technology would not be used to make nuclear weapons, as Tehran would stay in line with its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Zarif told the newspapers he expected Trump to carry through his threat not to certify Iranian compliance with the JCPOA to Congress on 15 October, a threat the US president outlined in a bellicose address to the UN Assembly which met with condemnation from Zarif and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Congress would then have 60 days to reimpose sanctions suspended under the deal against Tehran. “I think he has made a policy of being unpredictable, and now he’s turning that into being unreliable as well,” Zarif said. “My assumption and guess is that he will not certify and then will allow Congress to take the decision.”

“The deal allowed Iran to continue its research and development. So we have improved our technological base,” Zarif also noted in the interview. “If we decide to walk away from the deal we would be walking away with better technology. It will always be peaceful, because membership of the NPT is not dependent on this deal. But we will not observe the limitations that were agreed on as part of the bargain in this deal.”