Despite U.S. Sanctions, Iran Expands Its Nuclear Stockpile

By Colum Lynch

Two years after President Donald Trump announced the U.S withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, Tehran has resumed its enrichment of uranium, restarted research and development on advanced centrifuges, and expanded its stockpile of nuclear fuel, cutting in half the time it would need to produce enough weapons-grade fuel to build a nuclear bomb.

“Iran is manifestly closer to being able to produce a nuclear weapon than they were two years ago,” said Richard Nephew, who participated in negotiations on the landmark nuclear deal in 2015.

While there is no evidence Tehran is preparing a dash for a nuclear weapon, the Iranian advances raise questions about the success of the White House’s so-called “maximum pressure” campaign, which is aimed at forcing Iran through the imposition of ever more stringent sanctions to accept greater constraints on its political and military support for regional militias and the development of its ballistic missile program.

The effort—which has severely damaged Iran’s economy—has yet to temper Iran’s nuclear ambitions, instead prompting Tehran to resume nuclear activities prohibited by the nuclear pact, which is formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. It has also eroded Washington’s credibility even among many of its traditional allies and placed increasing strains on America’s diplomatic partnerships.

This month, the U.S. State Department publicly unveiled a diplomatic effort to secure a tangible result from its pressure campaign in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election—an agreement by the U.N. Security Council to extend a conventional arms embargo that is scheduled to expire on Oct. 18, just weeks before the election. Back in February, the United States privately circulated elements of a draft Security Council resolution extending the arms embargo to Britain, France, and Germany, hoping to rally support for the initiative.

The United States received a chilly response from the Europeans, who argued that the resolution was all but certain to be vetoed by China and Russia, which plan to sell arms to Iran once the embargo expires. The Europeans say they share Washington’s concerns about Iran’s ballistic missile programs and its support for proxies, including Hezbollah and other militias spread across the Middle East. But they fault Washington with undermining a landmark nuclear pact that enjoyed broad international support and which they believed had succeeded in constraining Tehran’s nuclear program, until the United States ditched it.

Last week, Brian Hook, the U.S. special envoy for Iran, warned that if the council failed to agree to extend the embargo, Washington could deliver a potentially lethal blow to the nuclear agreement by triggering a provision that would allow any of the initial seven signatories to reimpose—or snap back—all Iran sanctions, including the conventional arms embargo, that were in force before the nuclear pact was concluded. Iran has warned that if the sanctions are reimposed, it will likely pull out of the nuclear pact, end international inspections of its nuclear energy program, and withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Such a move by Washington would raise complex political, diplomatic, and legal questions about whether the United States, which withdrew its participation in the nuclear deal on May 8, 2018, has the legal right or the moral authority to trigger the snapback provision. Under the terms of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed the nuclear deal, any participant in the nuclear pact has the right to single-handedly snap back the previous sanctions. Trump administration officials contend that while the United States is no longer a participant in the nuclear deal, it still retains all the rights of a participant under the resolution, which has never been overturned. And they intend to exercise that right if they don’t get their way.

“There is no qualification in 2231 where ‘participant’ is defined in a way to require participation in the JCPOA. And if the drafters wanted to make the qualification, they could have, but they did not,” Hook told reporters on April 30. “This is the plain reading of the text.”

“The arms embargo must be renewed, and we will exercise all diplomatic options to accomplish that,” Hook said. “We have a policy goal of renewing the arms embargo, and that’s where our focus is. We’re hopeful that we’ll succeed.”

John Bellinger III, who served as the principal legal advisor to the National Security Council and the State Department during the George W. Bush administration, said the United States can make a credible legal case for reimposing sanctions but that the outcome could prove self-defeating.

“The U.S. has the right to trigger snapback, but they may ultimately not be effective in achieving what they want to achieve,” he said, warning that states may be disinclined to observe such sanctions. “There is a real risk it could backfire if the other countries are unwilling to go along. If you try to lead but no one will follow, you have not been successful, and the U.S. will have fractured the Security Council.”

“I suspect, at the end of the day, the Security Council will be forced on a purely legal basis to conclude we have the right to submit the resolution [triggering snapback],” Nephew said. “The debate will split the council as a point of fact because you will have the French, Brits, and Germans screaming that we are not doing this in good faith and the Russians and the Chinese will lose their minds on this.” The practical outcome of this approach, he said, is that the Chinese and Russians will cry foul and declare the action illegitimate. “I have no doubt they will sell arms and will do so immediately. Those tanks that [U.S. Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo is so concerned about could be put on the next boat.”

European officials have fumed in private over the latest U.S. threat, which they suspect is designed to kill off the nuclear pact. They view Washington’s legalistic approach as inconsistent and hypocritical, noting that the very resolution being invoked by the United States to reimpose sanctions also calls on states to support the implementation of the nuclear pact. One senior European official also pointed out that a key provision in the U.N. Charter, Article 25, states that “the Members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter”—a provision that the United States has ignored.

The U.S. strategy is “legally and politically obscene,” a U.N.-based diplomat privately toldthe International Crisis Group.

Russia has said publicly what some of its European partners are saying privately.

“Their reasoning is ludicrous, of course,” Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s ambassador to the U.N. in Vienna, said in an interview with the Russian newspaper Kommersant published on April 28. “It is common knowledge that Washington officially announced its withdrawal from the nuclear deal on May 8, 2018.”

“Theoretically, an attempt of this sort is possible, but it will make the U.S. appear in an extremely unattractive light,” he added. “I don’t think that the U.N. Security Council members would be ready to support the U.S. bid to remain a JCPOA participant. It is clear to everybody that this is preposterous. … The attempt to implement this plan will cause a lot of harm and lead to stormy debates in the U.N. Security Council.”

Democratic lawmakers who supported the JCPOA chided the administration for withdrawing from it in the first place and then later trying to use the deal to advance its goals. “They’re trying to have it both ways,” one Democratic congressional aide said.

Nevertheless, a bipartisan majority in Congress—including some of Trump’s most stalwart critics on the left—supports extending the Iran arms embargo. Hundreds of House lawmakers from both sides signed on to a letter to Pompeo last month urging an extension of the ban. “[W]e are concerned that the ban’s expiration will lead to more states buying and selling weapons to and from Iran. … This could have disastrous consequences for U.S. national security and our regional allies,” read the letter, which was organized by Reps. Eliot Engel and Michael McCaul, the chairman and the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, respectively.

“It’s now just several months out where China, Russia, other countries from around the world can all sell significant conventional weapons systems to the Iranians in October of this year,” Pompeo told reporters in a briefing last week. “This isn’t far off. This isn’t some fantasy by conservatives. This is a reality.”

The 2015 Iran nuclear pact—the culmination of more than a decade of diplomatic efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear program—offered Tehran an end to crippling economic sanctions in exchange for limiting its nuclear activities and undertaking a set of verifiable commitments to assure the world it was not building nuclear weapons. It was signed by representatives of Britain, China, the European Union, Iran, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States.

Trump derided the nuclear pact—a signature foreign-policy achievement for President Barack Obama—as a flawed agreement that gave Iran access to billions of dollars that have since been used to fund Iranian-backed militias and to advance a ballistic missile program that could improve Iran’s ability in the future to deliver a nuclear payload. On May 8, 2018, Trump formally withdrew from the agreement and began a process of imposing a range of U.S. sanctions on Iran.

Despite European government efforts to circumvent those sanctions, European businesses have largely observed the U.S. measures, fearing their companies could be penalized and denied access to U.S. consumer financial markets.

Iran has insisted for years that it has never had any desire to build nuclear weapons, but U.S. and other intelligence agencies have long contended that Tehran had been secretly developing nuclear weapons for years. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concluded that it had been working on a nuclear weapon design until at least 2009. But the IAEA also claimed that Iran had stopped its design work and was in compliance with its obligations under the nuclear pact until the United States reneged on the deal.

A year after the United States withdrew from the pact, Tehran began a process of violating its own commitments under the pact, announcing on May 8, 2019, that it would no longer be bound by limits on the size of its stockpiles of enriched uranium. Iran subsequently stepped up activities at the Natanz and Fordow enrichment facilities, increasing stores of a more purified grade of uranium that could bring it close to producing weapons-grade fuel. Iran also restarted prohibited research and development work on advanced centrifuges, which would enable the country to purify its uranium at a greater speed.

Under the terms of the nuclear pact, Iran is permitted to stockpile up to 300 kilograms of low-enriched uranium, far short of the estimated 1,050 kilograms required to produce enough weapons-grade fuel for a single bomb. But in March, the IAEA reported that Iran had produced 1,021 kilograms of low-enriched uranium, making it all but certain it has enough raw uranium to build a bomb. If Iran decided to pursue a nuclear weapon, according to Nephew, the larger stockpile would cut down its so-called breakout time—the time it would take to convert the low-enriched uranium into weapons-grade fuel—from 12 months to about six months.

But some arms control experts cautioned that Iran would still need to overcome considerable technical hurdles to weaponize and deploy a nuclear weapon. They suspect that Iran’s violations have been carefully calibrated to apply pressure on the other signatories of the nuclear pact to ease sanctions on Iran.

The Iranians’ “actions and statements indicate they are not racing to build a nuclear weapon or amass material for a nuclear weapon,” said Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association. “They are retaliating in a measured way to the U.S. reimposition of sanctions, and they have threatened to go further if the situation continues indefinitely.”

In January, after Iran rejected any constraints on its enrichment of uranium, the foreign ministers of Britain, France, and Germany called out Iran for violating the terms of the nuclear pact and jointly triggered a so-called dispute settlement mechanism to press Tehran to come back into compliance or face the prospect of the Europeans declaring it in breach of its obligations—an action that would lead to the reimposition of sanctions. But the Europeans also faulted the United States for withdrawing from the nuclear accord and expressed their hopes that the initiative would compel Iran to reverse course.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said at the time that the Europeans “could no longer leave the growing Iranian violations of the nuclear agreement unanswered.”

“Our goal is clear,” he said. “We want to preserve the accord and come to a diplomatic solution within the agreement.”

Richard Gowan, the U.N. director at the International Crisis Group, said Washington’s threat to trigger the snapback may be designed to “scare the Europeans into backing alternative ways to keep the arms embargo alive.”

Gowan said European diplomats had suspected that the United States might try to convince Britain to break with its European partners, declare Tehran in breach of its obligations, and trigger the snapback provision. “The fact the U.S. is making the case that it can still do snapback itself implies that the British option may not be available.”

“I am not sure there is a compromise available,” he added, noting that the Europeans may be paying as much attention as Trump to the U.S. election calendar. “The higher the chances of [Joe] Biden victory in November, the less likely the E3 [the three European signatories to the nuclear pact] will be to buy a U.S. snapback drive.”

Photo: IRNA

EU States Cool on US Blaming Iran for Gulf Tanker Attacks

European states on Monday urged caution in attributing blame for last week's tanker attacks in the Gulf, pointedly refusing to fall in line with Washington's assessment that Iran was behind the incidents.

Several EU foreign ministers arriving for talks in Luxembourg backed UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres' call for an independent investigation into explosions that damaged two tankers sending tensions—and oil prices—soaring.

US President Donald Trump has said the Gulf of Oman attacks had Iran "written all over it" and Britain has concluded responsibility "almost certainly" lies with Tehran, but the EU has called for caution.

"We know the findings of the American and the British intelligence services, which assume that you can be almost certain. We are comparing this with our information. I think you have to proceed very, very carefully on this," German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told reporters.

His Finnish counterpart Pekka Haavisto said it was vital to have "the full evidence" before reaching conclusions.

"I support very much the line of the UN Secretary General Mr Guterres, that a proper investigation (to put) all the facts on the table and then we can look what really has happened, who is behind this," he said.

"I think its a very very concerning event but let's have all the details first."

Luxembourg's foreign minister echoed his support for Guterres' call, warning against repeating the diplomatic mis-steps that led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

"I'm convinced, as I was 16 years ago, that you really shouldn't make the mistake of believing that you can solve a problem in the Middle East with weapons," Jean Asselborn said.

Unexploded Limpet Mine

A senior EU official last week said the bloc needed time to analyse the events, insisting this did not mean "that we're convinced or lack conviction" about the US assessment, which included video footage that Washington said showed an Iranian patrol boat removing an "unexploded limpet mine" from one of the damaged tankers.

The latest flare-up comes with the EU scrambling to save the Iran nuclear deal after Trump pulled the US out and reimposed tough sanctions on the Islamic republic.

The top official in the EU's diplomatic service, Helga Schmid, made a whistle-stop tour of the region last week to gather information and press the bloc's call for restraint and de-escalation.

Thursday's attacks took place southeast of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital corridor connecting the energy-rich states of the Middle East to the global market.

Iran, which is struggling with crippling US sanctions, has repeatedly warned in the past that it could block the strait in a relatively low-tech, high-impact counter measure to any attack by the United States.

Photo: ISNA

High-Stakes Iran Talks Try to Prevent Atomic Deal Unraveling

By Golnar Motevalli, Jonathan Tirone and Patrick Donahue

Diplomacy intended to salvage the Iran nuclear deal goes into high gear this week after Tehran threatened to follow the U.S. in abandoning the accord.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas landed in Iran’s capital to meet Monday with his counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrives in Tehran on Wednesday for more consultations. In Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency will assess the state of the 2015 agreement that was supposed to rein in Iranian nuclear work in return for sanctions relief.

While European governments recognize Iran’s right to benefit from the nuclear accord and are striving to protect trade with it despite U.S. sanctions, they won’t accept the Islamic Republic’s “reneging” on its nuclear obligations because the U.S. has, Maas said.

The only way to reduce tensions is ending America’s “economic war” on Iran, and Germany and the European Union have a role to play in this, said Zarif, speaking alongside his German counterpart.

Iranian Ultimatum

The flurry of diplomacy kicked off after Iran’s president signaled May 8 that the country could soon violate terms of the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The declaration was made on the one-year anniversary of the U.S. decision to unilaterally exit the accord and reimpose sanctions, including on vital oil exports. With its economy plunging into recession, Iran gave European signatories 60 days to deliver the financial relief offered under the deal in return for moderating its nuclear output.

The European vehicle to sustain trade with Iran, Instex, will become operational this month, according to a senior European official with knowledge of the Maas-Zarif talks, who asked not to be identified to discuss the private consultations. A material Iranian violation of the nuclear agreement would force EU governments to end efforts to help Tehran mitigate U.S. sanctions.

Germany initially had hoped Maas would be accompanied to Tehran by officials from France and the U.K., the other EU signatories to the deal, according to another European official.

In Vienna, IAEA monitors convene to assess Iranian compliance. They reported last month in a 15th consecutive quarterly report that showed Iran has observed its obligations, amid growing concerns that the Trump administration’s campaign to counter Iranian influence in the Middle East could spill into war.

“I am worried about tensions over the Iran nuclear issue,” IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said in a statement. “The nuclear-related commitments entered into by Iran under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action represent a significant gain. I therefore hope that ways can be found to reduce current tensions through dialogue.”

Iran has increased the rate at which it enriched uranium, although the amount stockpiled is still short of the 300 kilograms (661 pounds) allowed under the deal, Amano said at a press briefing. Any potential violation will be immediately reported and could trigger and emergency meeting in Vienna.

The country had about 180 kilograms of the material stockpiled last week—well short of the amount needed for a weapon, were the material to be further enriched, and if Iran were to make the decision to pursue a bomb. Tehran has always said its program is solely for civilian energy and industrial use, but world powers pursued the deal because they doubted that claim.

Tensions spiked after the U.S. accelerated the deployment of a carrier strike group to the Gulf to counter unspecified Iranian threats, and suggested without providing proof that Iran and its proxies were to blame for attacks on ships in the crucial waterway as well as a Saudi oil pipeline, and sent more troops to the region.

The visit by Abe, the first by a sitting Japanese prime minister in 41 years, was endorsed by President Donald Trump and is an effort to open a channel for mediation. But with the U.S. continuing to pile on new sanctions that target Iran’s petrochemical industry, the initiative has failed to gain traction.

“We are witnessing a treacherous policy” from the U.S., said Abbas Mousavi, the spokesman for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “They bring up negotiations and at the same time administrate maximum pressure. To Iran, this isn’t acceptable.”

High-level diplomacy could continue over the next month depending on the outcome of talks this week in Tehran. The remaining parties to the accord—China, France Germany, Russia and the U.K.—could convene a meeting of foreign ministers if that lends to the accord’s survival, according to one of the European officials.

Photo: Bloomberg

Exasperated Europeans Face Surprise Pompeo Visit on Iran

By Patrick Donahue, Gregory Viscusi and Tim Ross

As European Union governments scramble to save the Iran nuclear accord from U.S. efforts to scuttle it, the mood in diplomatic circles has blackened. Then suddenly, U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo lands in Brussels with little warning.

The top U.S. diplomat parachuted in as 28 European Union foreign ministers gathered to discuss Iran. After a cool initial reception to the unscheduled drop-in, Pompeo began meetings with European counterparts to address Iran’s “threatening actions and statements.”

“I made clear once again that we are worried in view of the developments and the tensions in the region,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told reporters. “We don’t want a military escalation.”

The hard-line approach adopted by President Donald Trump has left European allies irritated at the lack of strategy and powerless to sway a U.S. administration that’s failed to provide answers on where it all leads, according to diplomats in Berlin, Paris and London.

On their minds is the risk of a return to a nuclear threat in the Middle East, they said on condition of anonymity as talks proceed behind closed doors. The Europeans are in a bind, with limited options to protect the deal. Their attempt to circumvent U.S. sanctions has fallen flat as companies do not want to run foul of the U.S. and risk trade with such a key partner.

Exasperation

Ministers from the U.K., France and Germany, the three EU signatories to the Iran accord, were expected to sit down with Pompeo, but plans were ad-hoc given the last-minute nature of the visit. Early reaction was lukewarm at best.

“He’s always welcome obviously, but there are no precise plans for the moment,” European Union foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini said earlier in the day. Later she said she’d convene with him after the EU meeting was finished.

Behind the shuttle diplomacy lies a sense that more than 15 years of heavy lifting that culminated in the nuclear deal is slipping away, according to senior European diplomats. And even if few expect an open conflict in the near term, the fear is that Trump’s unpredictable approach could have unintended consequences.

What Next?

A tit-for-tat could easily ensue from an altercation, such as a hit on U.S. forces by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, two diplomats speculated. The U.S. squeezed Iran further by designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization last month.

Saudi Arabia said Monday two of its oil tankers were attacked while sailing toward the Persian Gulf. While it did not directly accuse Iran, the incident adds to a febrile atmosphere in the world’s most important chokepoint for oil shipments as Trump dials up the pressure. Crude rose as much as 2%.

It’s the latest turn between the U.S. and erstwhile European allies grappling with Trump’s hectoring on trade, defense spending and Chinese technology. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government, which has drawn special scrutiny from Trump, has been particularly ruffled by the president’s hardball tactics over a gas pipeline to Russia.

Iran’s warning last week that it had begun to gradually abandon parts of the 2015 nuclear accord capped Trump’s yearlong effort to derail the treaty. The so-called EU-3 responded with a pledge to keep the Iran deal on life support, primarily with an investment vehicle aimed at circumventing U.S. sanctions that are crippling the Iranian economy.

The U.S., meanwhile, has dispatched an aircraft carrier strike group and bomber force to the region, cementing its confrontational stance—and leaving Europeans with few options. And even as they reject a 60-day ultimatum presented by Iran, European leaders are laying blame with the White House.

“First of all, Iran hasn’t left the deal,” French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters Thursday at an EU summit in Sibiu, Romania. “Second of all, if they do, it’ll be the responsibility of the U.S.”

The brinkmanship has left Europeans baffled.

One diplomat said Trump’s legacy may be raising the nuclear threat from Iran as well as North Korea, rather than stopping it. Another quipped that short of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani boarding a flight to Washington and signing Pompeo’s 12 conditions, tantamount to total capitulation, nothing was on the table.

Trump himself has said he’s open to talks with Iran, suggesting the 12 demands from Pompeo are an opening negotiating salvo.

Pompeo has demanded that Iran abandon nuclear ambitions, scrap its missile program and end support for allied groups in places like Syria and Yemen. And while Europeans have made similar demands, they’re convinced open confrontation won’t yield any such results.

The treaty’s other signatories, Russia and China, may not offer Europe much help. While China’s purchase of Iranian oil could go a long way in preserving the deal, the government in Beijing won’t risk baiting Trump while they’re in deadlocked trade talks, according to two European diplomats.

Photo: DOD

Germany Rejects US Call to Leave Iran Nuclear Deal

Germany on Friday rejected an appeal by US Vice President Mike Pence for Europeans to withdraw from the Iranian nuclear deal and isolate Tehran.

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas defended the 2015 agreement under which Iran drastically scaled back its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.

"Together with the Brits, French and the entire EU we have found ways to keep Iran in the nuclear agreement until today," Maas told the Munich Security Conference.

A day earlier, Pence accused Tehran of planning a "new Holocaust" with its opposition to Israel and regional ambitions in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.

Maas said that "our goal remains an Iran without nuclear weapons, precisely because we see clearly how Iran is destabilizing the region".

Without this agreement, "the region will not be safer and would actually be one step closer to an open confrontation," he added. 

Pence at a conference on the Middle East in Warsaw on Thursday denounced the retention by the Europeans of the nuclear agreement.

He also criticized the initiative of France, Germany and Britain to allow European companies to continue operating in Iran despite US sanctions.

Photo Credit: Jochen Zick

EU's Iran Payments Vehicle Ready - But Stuck

A payment mechanism the EU hopes will save the Iran nuclear deal by bypassing US sanctions is ready, diplomats said Monday, but is held up by disagreements among European countries.

The "Special Purpose Vehicle" is being put together by Germany, France and Britain, the European signatories to the 2015 accord that curbed Tehran's nuclear ambitions in return for sanctions reilef.

The entity, to be based in France with German governance and finance from all three countries, will allow Iran to receive payments despite Washington reimposing sanctions after ditching the deal.

"It will be registered, it is not yet registered. I would say that we are immediately before the point of the implementation of our plan," German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said at a meeting in Brussels organized by the Belgian government.

While the vehicle is the work of the three governments involved, the EU wants to launch it along with a formal statement on Iran endorsed by all 28 member states and addressing the whole spectrum of European concerns about the Islamic republic.

The EU has commended Iran for sticking to its commitments under the nuclear deal, but has growing concerns about Tehran's ballistic missile program, as well as its human rights record, its interference in Middle East conflicts and recent attempted attacks against opposition groups in Europe.

Diplomatic sources said that Italy and Spain have so far blocked the adoption of the statement, meaning it may have to wait until the next formal meeting of EU ministers on February 12.

It is not clear whether Germany, France and Britain will wait for consensus on the statement or go ahead and launch the vehicle without it.

Photo Credit: Phototek

Germany Says Shares US Goals on Iran

Germany on Wednesday told the United States that it shared its goals on Iran even as the Europeans press ahead to save a denuclearization deal threatened by US sanctions.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas met in Washington with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who has voiced outrage over European plans to preserve commercial ties with Iran.

"In the end, we pursue the same goals with respect to Iran," Maas told 
reporters after meeting Pompeo.

“We just have different paths that we want to follow," he said.

Maas said that Germany shared concerns about Iran's ballistic missile program and believed Tehran should withdraw from Syria, where the Shiite clerical regime is supporting President Bashar al-Assad.

But Maas said that the end of the 2015 agreement would lead Iran to pursue a nuclear program with military purposes.

“This would create the danger of a military conflict in the region," Maas said.

The United States under former president Barack Obama negotiated the deal with Iran alongside Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.

UN inspectors say that Iran has complied with the agreement, under which it ceased sensitive nuclear work in exchange for sanctions relief.

President Donald Trump withdrew from the accord, vowing instead to target Iran aggressively and roll back its role in the region.

That European Union said last month that it was working on a legal entity through which businesses could trade with Iran and avoid US sanctions.

Photo Credit: Wikicommons

Germany Warns US Iran Sanctions Could Cause 'Chaos'

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas warned Wednesday that US President Donald Trump's decision to reimpose sanctions on Iran could further destabilise the Middle East and boost radical forces in the region.

Trump brought back the punishing sanctions after unilaterally pulling out of a landmark 2015 deal between Tehran and Western powers to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions.

"We still think that it is a mistake to give up on the nuclear accord with
Iran," Maas said in an interview with the daily Passauer Neue Presse.

"We are fighting for the deal because it also serves our purpose by bringing about security and transparency in the region."

Noting Iran's geographic proximity to Europe, Maas warned that "anyone who's hoping for regime change must not forget that whatever follows could bring us much bigger problems."

"Isolating Iran could boost radical and fundamentalist forces," he said, adding that "chaos in Iran, as we have experienced in Iraq or Libya, would further destabilize an already troubled region."

In a desperate bid to save the nuclear accord, European governments have pledged to do what they can to keep business links with Tehran.

Despite the political will to hold firm, many large European firms such as German automaker Daimler are leaving Iran for fear of US penalties.

The US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, welcomed the news.

"We are pleased to see German businesses stopping their trade with Iran, complying with U.S. sanctions, and helping pressure the Iranian regime back to the table," he tweeted.  

"We stand together to stop Iran's malign activities."

Photo Credit: Wikicommons

France, Germany, Britain Formally Demand Exemptions from US Iran Sanctions

France, Britain, Germany and the EU on Wednesday sent the United States a joint official request for their companies to be exempt from punitive measures resulting from fresh US sanctions on Iran.

"As allies, we expect that the United States will refrain from taking action to harm Europe's security interests," said the letter to US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire said the three countries and the EU were asking the US "to exempt European businesses doing legitimate trade in Iran from all extraterritorial American sanctions."

"Those businesses must be able to pursue their activities," he wrote on Twitter.

📝 We ask the American authorities, in a letter signed with Germany, the UK and @eu_eeas to exempt European businesses doing legitimate trade in Iran from all extraterritorial American sanctions. Those businesses must be able to pursue their activities. pic.twitter.com/mDZP42gb0b

— Bruno Le Maire (@BrunoLeMaire) June 6, 2018

The plea comes as European leaders scramble to save the hard-fought deal signed between Iran and world powers in 2015 under which Tehran agreed to limits on its nuclear capacities in exchange for relief from crippling economic sanctions.

US President Donald Trump announced he was abandoning the deal last month—which will mean new sanctions on the Islamic republic and punitive measures
for those who trade with it.

Analysts say European firms which have rushed to invest in Iran after the lifting of sanctions over the past three years have the most to lose from the renewed sanctions.

Several major companies including France's Total and the Netherlands' Maersk have already said it will be impossible to stay in Iran once the sanctions are fully reimposed over the next six months, unless they receive explicit exemptions from Washington. 

French automaker PSA said Monday that it would pull out of two joint ventures to sell its cars in Iran to avoid the risk of punishing fines.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia

No New EU Sanctions on Iran—For Now

EU foreign ministers on Monday discussed how they could persuade the US not to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, but stopped short of imposing new sanctions on Tehran.

Britain, France and Germany used a meeting of the EU's 28 foreign ministers  to try to build support for expanding sanctions against Iran to punish it for its ballistic missile program and its role in regional conflicts including Syria and Yemen.

They hope that by doing so they will persuade US President Donald Trump not to follow through on his threat to abandon the landmark 2015 deal to curb  Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelson said there was "a very broad majority" in favor of expanding sanctions, as the clock ticks down to a May 12 deadline imposed by Trump to "fix" the agreement.

Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign minister, said there was a need to "send a strong signal to Iran that we're concerned in relation to some of their activity particularly in Syria".

"But also to send a message to Washington that we share their concerns in some of those areas," Coveney said after the talks in Luxembourg.

Targets for new sanctions could include both Iranians and also non-Iranian militias in Syria, an EU diplomat said.

But any decision on sanctions would have to have unanimous support from all 28 EU states and so far several, including Italy and Sweden, are not convinced.

"There is no consensus at the moment on the fact that these measures would be useful in this moment or appropriate in this moment," EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini told reporters. "I don't exclude that this will happen in the future but it's not the case today."

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the question of expanding sanctions would "remain on the agenda" in the coming weeks.

Another EU diplomat said the aim of Monday's talks was to build political support for new sanctions and the effort would continue in the coming weeks.

The EU is desperate to preserve the Iran nuclear deal, seeing it as the best way to stop Tehran getting the bomb.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel will both visit Washington on separate official visits before May 12, in part to lobby Trump on the issue.

Trump has long derided the deal as a capitulation to Tehran and has declared it no longer is in US interests to maintain the sanctions relief his predecessor Barack Obama granted Iran in return for controls on its nuclear program,

Photo Credit: EEAS