UNITED NATIONS (AP) — France, Germany and the United Kingdom moved Thursday to reimpose United Nations sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, further isolating Tehran after its atomic sites were repeatedly bombed during a 12-day war with Israel.
The process, termed a “snapback” by the diplomats who negotiated it into Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, was designed to be veto-proof at the U.N. and could take effect as soon as October.
It would again freeze Iranian assets abroad, halt arms deals with Tehran and penalize any development of its ballistic missile program, among other measures, further squeezing the country’s reeling economy.
The move starts a 30-day clock for the sanctions to return, a period that likely will see intensified diplomacy from Iran, whose refusal to cooperate with inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, started the crisis. Iran will also probably emerge as a top focus of the U.N. General Assembly when it meets next month in New York.
The British, French and German foreign ministers suggested that they viewed the snapback as a way to spur negotiations with Tehran.
"This measure does not signal the end of diplomacy: we are determined to make the most of the 30-day period that is now opening to engage in dialogue with Iran,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot wrote on the social platform X.
But Iran immediately decried the move, with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi calling it “unjustified, illegal and lacking any legal basis" in a call with his European counterparts.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran will respond appropriately to this unlawful and unwarranted measure,” he said. Hours later, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the move by the European countries will “gravely undermine” its ongoing cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency.
In the past, Iran has threatened to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, potentially following North Korea, which abandoned the treaty in 2003 and then built atomic weapons.
Europeans warned Iran about return of sanctions
The three European nations warned Aug. 8 that Iran could trigger the snapback when it halted inspections by the IAEA after Israeli strikes at the start of the two countries’ 12-day war in June. Israeli attacks then killed Tehran’s top military leaders and chased Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei into hiding.
The European nations triggered the sanctions process through a letter to the U.N. Security Council. France and the U.K. also requested that the 15-member council hold closed consultations Friday to discuss Iran’s noncompliance, according to a diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss still-private information.
There's a slim chance diplomacy will create an opening to push back the Oct. 18 deadline, after which any sanctions effort will likely face a veto. Iran likely would need to resume direct negotiations with the U.S. and provide the IAEA full access to its nuclear sites to get such a delay.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised the Europeans' decision and said America “remains available for direct engagement with Iran.” “Snapback does not contradict our earnest readiness for diplomacy; it only enhances it,” Rubio said in a statement.
Using the snapback mechanism will likely heighten tensions between Iran and the West in a region still burning over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. As the measure was announced, Israel launched strikes targeting Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
“Iranian leaders perceive a sanctions ‘snapback’ as a Western effort to weaken Iran’s economy indefinitely and perhaps stimulate sufficient popular unrest to unseat Iran’s regime,” the New York-based Soufan Center think tank said Thursday.
Iran appears resigned
After Europe’s warning, Iran initially downplayed the threat of renewed sanctions and engaged in little visible diplomacy for weeks, but it did partake in a brief diplomatic push in recent days, highlighting the chaos gripping its theocracy.
In Tehran on Thursday, Iran’s rial currency traded at over 1 million to $1. At the time of the 2015 accord, it traded at 32,000 to $1, showing the currency’s precipitous collapse over the last decade.
Outside a currency shop in Tehran, resident Arman Vasheghani Farahani told The Associated Press that “many of us feel a deep sense of uncertainty and desperation” over the currency collapse sparked by the nuclear tensions.
“Should we keep trying, or is it time to give up? And how long will this situation last?” he asked. “No official seems willing to take responsibility for what’s happening.”
At issue is Iran’s nuclear enrichment
Before the war in June, Iran was enriching uranium up to 60% purity — a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%. It also built a stockpile containing enough highly enriched uranium to build multiple atomic bombs, should it choose to do so.
Iran has long insisted its program is peaceful, though Western nations and the IAEA assess that Tehran had an active nuclear weapons program until 2003. It remains unclear just how much the Israeli and U.S. strikes on nuclear sites during the war disrupted Iran’s program.
Under the 2015 deal, Iran agreed to allow the IAEA even greater access to its nuclear program than the agency has in other member nations. That included permanently installing cameras and sensors at nuclear sites.
But IAEA inspectors, who faced increasing restrictions on their activities since the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from Iran’s nuclear deal in 2018, have yet to access those sites. Meanwhile, Iran has said it moved uranium and other equipment out before the strikes — possibly to new, undeclared sites that raise the risk that monitors could lose track of the program’s status.
On Wednesday, IAEA inspectors were on hand to watch a fuel replacement at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor, which is run with Russian technical assistance.
Despite inspectors returning to Iran, the head of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that regaining access to crucial nuclear facilities is still “a work in progress."
Russia and China try to buy Iran time
The deal’s snapback mechanism will expire Oct. 18. After that, any sanctions effort would face a veto from U.N. Security Council members China and Russia — nations that have provided some support to Iran in the past but stayed out of the June war. China has remained a major buyer of Iranian crude oil, something that could be affected if snapback happens.
Russia announced Thursday that Moscow and Beijing introduced a draft resolution to the Security Council, offering a six-month extension of the U.N. sanctions relief. Russia is also due to take the presidency of the council in October, which is likely to put additional pressure on the Europeans to act.
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Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Liechtenstein reported from Vienna. Associated Press writers Amir Vahdat and Mehdi Fattahi in Tehran, Iran, and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press receives support for nuclear security coverage from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Outrider Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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Additional AP coverage of the nuclear landscape: https://apnews.com/projects/the-new-nuclear-landscape/
Farnoush Amiri, Jon Gambrell And Stephanie Liechtenstein, The Associated Press
