(Bloomberg) — The US and European powers urged Iran to return to the negotiation table and comply with nuclear inspectors, renewing efforts to engage in diplomacy with the Islamic Republic after United Nations sanctions snapped back into place.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said a deal remains the best outcome for Iran, and absent one, countries should implement sanctions immediately. UN leaders had rejected a bid to extend the deadline for sanctions to snap back into place, meaning that penalties lifted as part of the 2015 accord went into effect early Sunday in Tehran.
“President Trump has been clear that diplomacy is still an option,” Rubio said in a statement. “For that to happen, Iran must accept direct talks, held in good faith, without stalling or obfuscation.”
In August, the UK, France and Germany triggered the so-called snapback mechanism — a veto-proof provision in the 2015 deal to control Iran’s atomic activities — giving Tehran 30 days to comply to a set of demands or face the re-imposition of international sanctions on its economy and missile program.
“Our countries will continue to pursue diplomatic routes and negotiations,” the so-called E3 bloc of European powers said in a statement Sunday. “The reimposition of UN sanctions is not the end of diplomacy. We urge Iran to refrain from any escalatory action and to return to compliance with its legally binding safeguards obligations.”
Iran has for years denied its nuclear program is for military purposes. The country will remain part of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told reporters in New York on Friday. After the move by the E3, diplomats feared Tehran would withdraw from the landmark international agreement aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.
On Saturday, Pezeshkian said the Trump administration had demanded his country hand over its entire enriched uranium stockpile in exchange for temporary relief from impending UN sanctions.
“They want us to give them all of our enriched uranium in exchange for giving us a three-month period, which is absolutely unacceptable,” Pezeshkian said, referring to the US.
“In a few months, they will raise another demand and say that they want to trigger the snapback,” he said. “If we have to choose between their unreasonable demand and the snapback, we will choose the snapback.”
Iran’s currency hit a fresh record low on Saturday, according to local media and a Tehran-based trader.
Last week, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described Tehran’s nuclear negotiations with the US as a “dead end” in a televised address. Khamenei said that under current conditions, discussions with the Americans “would cause significant harm to the country, some of which could be considered irreparable.”
He also reiterated that Iran hasn’t pushed its nuclear enrichment to bomb-grade purity because “we don’t have nuclear bombs, we won’t have them, and we have no intention of using nuclear weapons, but we do have enrichment.”
Iran’s foreign ministry said on Saturday it had recalled the country’s ambassadors to the UK, France, and Germany for “consultations” over what it called those nations’ “irresponsible” move to trigger the snapback mechanism. The ministry stopped short of calling it a diplomatic break, but didn’t say when the envoys might return to their posts.
“The E3 will continue to work with all parties towards a new diplomatic solution to ensure Iran never gets a nuclear weapon,” the bloc said in the Sunday statement while urging “all UN member states to implement “ the sanctions.
On Sunday, Iran’s parliament will debate a letter by its members calling for a change in the country’s stated policy of not pursuing nuclear weapons, raising the stakes in the diplomatic showdown over Tehran’s atomic work.
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