Iran upbeat on nuclear deal hopes after EU talks

Brussels, May 15 

Europe and Iran sought a united front on Tuesday to save the nuclear deal US President Donald Trump abandoned last week, with Britain warning against regime change and Tehran expressing hope it could keep the economic benefits of the accord.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif arrived in Brussels ahead of a meeting with his British, French and German counterparts, holding “good and constructive” talks with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.

“We are on the right path to move forward ... Whatever (is) decided should preserve and guarantee Iran’s rights ... Our talks (with the E3) will continue in the next two weeks,” he said, referring to Britain, France and Germany.

Many European diplomats doubt privately that the 2015 accord between Iran and six world powers can survive the reimposition of US sanctions ordered by Trump, but the European powers will say that they stick by the terms of the 2015 pact giving Iran sanctions relief in return for an end to its nuclear ambitions.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani asked the European Union to stand against the United States’ “illegal and illogical” actions, saying that Tehran could stay in the accord only if it fully benefits from it.

The accord lifted international sanctions on Iran in 2016 in return for Tehran shutting down its capacity, under strict surveillance by the UN nuclear watchdog, to stockpile enriched uranium for a possible atomic bomb.

Trump denounced the accord, completed under his predecessor Barack Obama, as a “horrible, one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made” as it did not cover Iran’s ballistic missile programme or its role in Middle East conflicts.

The deal’s proponents say it is crucial to forestalling a nuclear Iran and preventing wider war in the Middle East.

Mogherini, who as the EU’s top diplomat chaired the final stretch of 12 years of negotiations to clinch the Iran accord in July 2015 in Vienna, said: “We will all save it together.” Zarif said talks would go on for the next two weeks and EU diplomats said they needed some time to understand the US position. — Reuters

Sanctions dilemma

• European diplomats acknowledged that the EU support, however sincere, risked looking hollow after Trump last week reimposed an array of wide sanctions on the Islamic Republic that will hit European companies investing in Iran
• The EU, which with Germany, France, Britain, Russia, China and the United States, signed the nuclear accord with Iran, does have some steps it can take to shield European business in Iran
• They include retaliatory sanctions, allowing the European Investment Bank to invest directly in Iran and coordinating euro-denominated credit lines from European governments. In the past, the EU has also lodged complaints at the World Trade Organisation
• But the reach of the US financial system, the dominance of the US dollar, Trump’s efforts to weaken the WTO and the presence of European companies’ operations in the United States all weaken any potential EU measures