Iran Pours Cold Water on Europe’s Efforts to Salvage Nuclear Deal
Europe Boosts Effort to Salvage Iran Trade as Nations Sign Up
(Bloomberg) -- A senior Iranian official said talks on Friday with the remaining signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal probably made insufficient progress to prevent his nation from breaching some key components of the accord.
“We have made our decision, we will proceed with the decision to reduce commitments,” Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said after a meeting in Vienna. “I don’t think the progress we made today will be considered as enough, but this is a decision that is not mine.”
Officials from Iran and the five other parties to the deal -- France, Germany, the U.K., China and Russia -- are scrambling to prevent a possible collapse of the pact, which would heighten fears of a new military Mideast conflict. The nations agreed to meet again very soon as the ministerial level.
Araghchi’s comments appeared to pour cold water on some successes during the day. Seven more European nations agreed to support the U.K., Germany and France in rolling out a trade mechanism, known as Instex, that aims to protect trade with Iran from U.S. sanctions. And as the Vienna meeting broke up, Araghchi and other diplomats confirmed that the first transactions using the vehicle had been processed.
Tensions have spiked in the Persian Gulf, with crippling U.S. sanctions since the Trump administration exited the 2015 accord a year ago prompting Tehran to warn it will ditch deal components of the deal unless it’s given an economic lifeline by July 7. Attacks on shipping in the strategic waterway and the Iranian downing of an American unmanned drone have raised concerns of another war.
Iran had been expected to breach a 300-kilogram cap on stockpiles of low-grade uranium on Thursday but appeared to back off from the threat as European nations led efforts to avoid a permanent rupture.
As meeting in the Austrian capital got underway, Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Austria and Sweden said in a joint statement that they gave the “greatest importance” to preserving the Iran accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA , and would back Instex. The seven nations said it was crucial Iran “fully meets and respects” the terms of the deal but made no mention of any financial contributions.
No Breakthrough
Araghchi for one was far from convinced. “I cannot name it a breakthrough, but I can say it was somehow good progress,” he said. For Instex to be of use to Iran, European nations must buy Iranian oil through it, he said.
But with the U.S. already having threatened sanctions against anyone using the mechanism, European nations are thought to be considering providing credit for Tehran to pay for humanitarian shipments, such as food and drugs.
Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Majid Takht Ravanchi, on Thursday said that European nations weren’t working quickly enough to guarantee Iran could continue to trade with them despite U.S. sanctions.
“Personally, I don’t think it will be enough,” Ravanchi told reporters in New York. “It took them more than a year to put this in place, and it’s still not operational. It’s as if you have a beautiful car, you enjoy looking at it, but there’s no gas inside. So all you can do is look.”
Iran eliminated some 97% of its enriched uranium to comply with the nuclear agreement. It previously had enough material to build more than a dozen bombs. While Iran has always said its program is civilian, world powers pursued the deal because they doubted that claim.
President Donald Trump says he wants to negotiate a new deal that would also restrict Iran’s missile programs and support for armed proxies around the region, but Iran has refused to talk while its economy and -- more recently -- its leaders are under sanctions.
--With assistance from David Wainer and Charles Penty.
To contact the reporters on this story: Golnar Motevalli in Tehran at gmotevalli@bloomberg.net;Boris Groendahl in Vienna at bgroendahl@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lin Noueihed at lnoueihed@bloomberg.net, Mark Williams, Andrew Atkinson
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