Iran warned it could leave the NPT if sanctions return and has already limited IAEA access.
Europe is offering to delay sanctions on Iran, but only if Tehran agrees to return to talks with Washington and starts working again with UN nuclear inspectors.
That’s the deal on the table, according to western diplomats speaking ahead of a high-stakes meeting set for Friday in Istanbul between officials from the UK, France, Germany, and Iran. These would be the first direct talks since Israel’s 12-day military offensive on Iran, which briefly dragged in the United States.
The pressure is on the E3, that’s the group made up of Britain, France, and Germany, to decide whether to trigger the snapback mechanism, a clause from the collapsed 2015 nuclear deal. That clause, if invoked, would automatically reimpose UN sanctions on Iran.
The 2015 deal crumbled after former US President Donald Trump ditched it during his first term, then piled on sanctions that hit Iran’s economy hard. Iran responded by stepping up its nuclear activity.
European offer hinges on talks and IAEA access
According to diplomats, the E3 will propose a few more months of breathing room before they consider the snapback, pushing the sanctions deadline beyond the current mid-September window. This is just one month before the October 18 expiration of some key clauses in the original nuclear agreement. But this extension doesn’t come free. Iran would have to agree to restart negotiations with the Trump administration and begin some form of cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
One western diplomat allegedly told FT that: “If Iran comes to the table and works with inspectors, we hold off. If not, sanctions are back on.” The extension itself would require a new UN Security Council resolution. That’s a whole other political headache, but Europe is clearly more interested in diplomacy than escalation.
Meanwhile, Tehran has already warned that if UN sanctions return, Iran could walk away from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entirely. That would be a big step. Iran has already frozen ties with the IAEA, especially after Israeli and American strikes hit Iranian nuclear sites during the war.
Still, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said on Wednesday that a new IAEA team would be arriving in Tehran soon to talk about “a new modality” for cooperation. He added, though, that this didn’t mean inspectors would get access to nuclear sites.
While Europe waits, Iran has been busy holding separate talks with Russia and China, the other two original parties to the 2015 nuclear deal. These meetings happened in Tehran this week, but so far, nothing public has come out of them.
Iran and the US had been holding indirect talks since April, but those discussions froze after Israel launched airstrikes that killed several top Iranian military leaders and nuclear scientists. That attack shook the regime and deepened mistrust of the US.
Trump’s position hasn’t changed. He said this week that he’s in “no rush” to reopen talks, claiming Iran’s nuclear sites are already destroyed. “It’s Tehran that needs to come back,” he said. But IAEA analysts warn that Iran could be back enriching uranium again “in a matter of months.”
That’s not a small thing, considering Iran hasn’t explained where over 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium has gone. That amount is enough to make several nuclear weapons, and officials think it may have been hidden before the Israeli strikes.
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