بسم الله الرحمن الرحیم  Statement By Ambassador Esmaeil Baghaei Hamaneh Permanent Representative Of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations Office in Geneva Before The Conference on Disarmament Geneva, 26 January 2021  ( Virtual Meeting )       Thank you Mr. President. I would like to wish you all success in discharging your responsibility as the CD’s President and welcome those distinguished ambassadors and colleagues who are recently appointed as their respective countries’ representatives in the CD. We also wish everyone a promising new year in which the rule of law and responsible statecraft prevail. Every year we begin with a new hope for a better future, and 2021 is no exception. The new year can offer a momentum to turn a new page in the history of multilateralism, including our multilateral negotiations toward nuclear disarmament, provided that all members, in particular the nuclear weapon States, demonstrate genuine political will and take responsibility. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which entered into force as of 22 January 2021 after 50 States have already ratified it. This is a promising development to realize the aspiration of humanity for a world free from nuclear weapons.    Mr. President, 2020 was for sure an ominous year, not merely because of the ferocious viral pandemic but for the aggravating lawlessness and record-level militant unilateralism that further deteriorated the global security climate.  2020 was a trying year for my nation as well as it had to cope with one of the worst pandemics while at the same time resisting against an unprecedented malicious campaign of economic and other coercive measures from the bullying Trump administration. In the first days of January 2020, Iran and the whole region lost the anti-terrorism hero and the most effective advocate of peace in the region, General Soleimani, to a brutal act of State terror in Baghdad.  Months later, on 27 November 2020, our people had to mourn for the loss of a prominent researcher Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who is credited with developing the first Covid test kits in Iran among his other scientific activities and services to the public; he was assassinated as part of a pattern of Israeli State terrorism that has for long been targeting the scientific elites of the countries in the region.  It is a bitter irony that the regime’s representative, in her remarks before this body on 21 January, cried wolf about terrorism, international law, and non-proliferation as if the military apartheid has minimum regard for international law or moral norms. The military occupier that does not feel bound by any civilized norm of engagement, that is not committed to any international disarmament instrument, that is not a party to the NPT, the only possessor of nuclear weapon in our region and the only obstacle to realizing a Nuclear Weapon Free Zone in the Middle East, has no moral standing to talk about compliance. Only an establishment that is the top epicenter of terrorism and is underpinned by embedded racism and that takes pride in stealing lands by frequent military aggressions, massive massacres of civilians, demolishing of civilian homes, imprisoning of the young children and murdering of the kids, can be so barefaced as to desecrate this audience by repeating shameless lies and false narratives about other nations that are deeply rooted in there for millennia.   The same regime that went to all extremes in its malign attempt to dismantle the JCPOA, blames Iran for noncompliance with the same.  No one is going to be fooled by this smokescreen trick that you master and use them again and again, being a cartoon image in the UNGA or worthless tirade here at the CD.      Mr. President, During the last year the international security environment further deteriorated due mainly to an all-out provocative arms race across the spectrum that included upgrading of nuclear arsenals and development of new types of nuclear warheads, as well as unprecedented rise in conventional military expenditure and arms sale in many parts of the world. More sophisticated armaments were poured into the already volatile region of West Asia, keeping the Middle East a top destination for weapons and fueling the atrocious ongoing conflicts across the region. The arms exporters continue to make profit at the cost of innocent people who are brutalized by these weapons in our region.  Still, the most immediate and ever growing threat to regional peace and security as well as to its stability comes from one single source that is the Israeli regime which continues to accumulate all kinds of WMD in particular huge nuclear arsenal, without being subject to any accountability mechanism and by enjoying blanket card from its supporters.    Mr. President, 76 years after the first nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only absolute guarantee against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons that ensure such weapons will never be used again, is their total, irreversible and verifiable elimination. That is why we should essentially put nuclear disarmament at the top of our priorities here in the CD with a particular focus on negotiation of elements of a legally binding instrument for the total, irreversible and verifiable elimination of all nuclear weapons.   In the interim, the Non-Nuclear Weapon States do have a right to a treaty based Negative Security Assurances. The final document of the SSODI in 1978 asked nuclear weapon States to “pursue efforts to conclude appropriate, effective arrangements to assure NNWS against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons.” The same has been highlighted by the NPT Review Conferences, particularly in the 13 practical steps in 2000 RevCon and the action plan on nuclear disarmament in 2010 RevCon, which includes concrete steps for the total elimination of nuclear weapons. Mr. President,    The critical importance of the Conference on Disarmament as the sole multilateral disarmament negotiating forum cannot be overemphasized. We all will be at loss in the long run, if we continue to fail in overcoming the CD’s prolonged deadlock. We look forward to working with you Mr. President and with other delegations in crafting a comprehensive and balanced programme of work that encompasses all its four core mandates, namly: Nuclear disarmament, Fissile material cut-off treaty (FMCT), Prevention of an arms race in outer space (PAROS), and Negative security assurances (NSAs).   The upcoming 2021 NPT Review Conference should provide extra motivation and momentum for all of us to pull together and make every effort to have the CD deliver. We have to take lessons from our past failures, avoid distraction of any sort and develop a programme of work that is well reflective of the CD’s core mandates without tying that to controversial and unnecessary subjects.    Mr. President, We should all practice to act what we preach otherwise our words won't have meaning and may as well be seen as hypocritical.  For years, some actors have self-proclaimed themselves, albeit undeservedly, as the guardians of non-proliferation smokescreening the very fact that they are the major proliferators. Naming Iran as a proliferation risk is as absurd as to suggest that Germany is an honest advocate for nuclear disarmament. They are not. Just a fact check: Numerous tactical B61 nuclear bombs are stored for use by Germany under a NATO nuclear weapons sharing agreement in violation of Article I, II and VI of the NPT. Now talking about WMD, I should hasten to remind that German companies were among those that provided Iraq with precursors of chemical agents used by Iraqi dictator to engage in chemical offensive against Iranian military and civilians.  What about Iran? Does Iran have one single nuclear bomb? Hasn’t it been under the most robust IAEA inspection for the past decade? Iran’s impeccable record as a practical believer in the NPT is well known and sufficiently documented by the IAEA’s numerous reports verifying Iran’s compliance with its voluntary obligations under the JCPOA. Iran persisted in its responsibly implementing the JCPOA quite one-sidedly following the US unilateral withdrawal. From May 2018 when the US unilaterally pulled out of the agreement in violation of UNSC resolution 2231 till May 2019, Iran continued to fully implement its commitment without any pause. Iran’s decision to scale back its voluntary commitments was in strict accordance with the terms of the JCPOA’s paragraphs 26 and 36 in response to continuing significance non-performance by the other participants. And this was all the while that the EU/E3 had already ceased to honor their commitments under the US pressure. Were it not for Iran’s responsible stance, resilience, endurance and perseverance, the JCPOA would have long collapsed.  The EU representative’s remarks on JCPOA (on 19 January) were therefore ‘underwhelming’, to say the least. It is time the EU/E3 own up to their mishaps and avoid shouldering away their responsibility by fostering self-serving narratives about the JCPOA’s current situation.  Those who contributed to this situation by choosing to appease the bullying administration, shall bear the responsibility for the consequences instead of shifting blame on the genuine compliant party. Iran’s remedial measures are reversible as soon as all JCPOA participants respect their obligations, not in words and for publicity but in practice and for the good of rule of law and pacta sun servanda. I thank you Mr. President.