An Iranian lawmaker says some politicians unnecessarily delayed an agreement to revive the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA), hurting ordinary people’s livelihoods.

Jalil Rahimi Jahanabadi, member of the Iranian parliament’s foreign policy and national security committee, told local media that the same people who were tearing up the JCPOA in recent past now completely agree with its revival.

Rahimi was implicitly referring to hardliners who during the presidency of Hassan Rouhani opposed the agreement his government had concluded with world powers in 2015.

The lawmaker said that opposition to the deal was driven by political motives. He retorted that some politicians “did not want the previous government to restore the agreement. They wanted to be the ones to do it.”

Rahimi, a Sunni Muslim and a two-term parliament member, told the former opponents of JCPOA that they have to answer to the people as “why they did that to their livelihood.”

The US left the JCPOA in 2015 and imposed crippling sanctions on Iran.

Tehran began talks in April 2021, and could have reportedly concluded an agreement to revive the deal, but it was delayed until presidential elections in June 2021 when it was all but certain that hardliner Ebrahim Raisi would be elected.

Five months after the election, the new government dominated by the hardliner camp returned to negotiations in Vienna.