At a debate with five other approved candidates ahead of Iran’s May 19 presidential elections, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani blamed Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of sabotaging the 2015 nuclear deal Iran agreed to with the United States and five other powers, Agence France-Presse reported Friday.

“We saw how they wrote slogans on missiles and showed underground (missile) cities to disrupt the JCPOA (nuclear deal),” Rouhani charged during the debate. He was referring to tests featuring ballistic missiles marked with the phrase “Israel must be wiped off the Earth,” which were conducted in March of last year.

The Iranian government has maintained that the missile tests are not banned under the nuclear agreement. However, the exercises have been viewed as provocations and heightened tensions with the West and Israel.

The Guardian called the criticism of the IRGC “rare” and observed that the IRGC, which has been strengthened as a result of the nuclear deal, is a “parallel, unelected” organization that is not answerable to Rouhani.

Rouhani’s attack on critics of the deal comes at a time when there are doubts that Iran is abiding by all of its commitments made in the agreement. A February report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) indicated that Iran may be exceeding limits of the amounts of enriched uranium and heavy water that it is allowed to stockpile by the terms of the deal.

In 2013, at a presidential debate, Rouhani said that Iran had violated an earlier deal that he had negotiated, and, instead of stopping Iran’s nuclear research, Rouhani boasted “we were the ones to complete it! We completed the technology.”

[Photo: Mehr News ]