Russia’s foreign minister remarked that “we need guarantees that sanctions will not affect in any way the regime of trade, economic and investment ties set out in the JCPOA on Iran’s nuclear program. We asked our American colleagues (because they are running the whole show here) to give us guarantees in writing, at least at the level of Secretary of State, that the current process launched by the U.S. will not impinge in any way on our free full-scale trade, economic, investment and military-technical cooperation with the Islamic Republic”. Secretary of State Antony Blinken maintained that “the sanctions that are being put in place and that have been put in place on Russia have nothing to do with the Iran nuclear deal and the prospects of getting back into that agreement… It’s also in Russia’s interest, irrespective of anything else for Iran not to be able to have a nuclear weapon or… have the capacity to produce a weapon on very, very short order”.