Washington, DC – As Middle Eastern fears grow that Europe’s “snapback” sanctions against Iran, experts warn, could only add to the growing global tensions.
On Thursday, Germany, France and the United Kingdom – Europe’s largest economies – triggered a 30-day process to reimpose sanctions over what they called “significant” violations of a 2015 agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear programme.
The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) policy director Ryan Costello said, “We’re heading toward the snapback scenario where the sanctions come back and Iran is likely to retaliate in some way that’s unhelpful.”
and the conflict may return to violence following Israel’s earlier this year’s attacks on Iran. “It’s another kind of domino falling on the way toward the June war reigniting”, Costello said.
The United States welcomed the move of the European countries, which in June bombed three nuclear facilities as part of an Israeli assault on Iran.
However, talks with Iran have also been kept open thanks to US President Donald Trump’s administration.
“The United States remains available for direct engagement with Iran – in furtherance of a peaceful, enduring resolution to the Iran nuclear issue”, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement. “Snapback only strengthens our sincere desire to diplomacy,” says the statement.
However, Costello made it clear that Iran was present when Israel launched its 12-day war.
A round of nuclear talks between US and Iranian officials was set to take place on June 15. However, two days before the scheduled negotiations, Israeli bombs started falling on Tehran, which put them off for good.
According to Costello, the US and Europe must first regain trust with Iran in order to return to the nuclear talks.
“The overwhelming sentiment in Iran is that those talks were all a ruse – that Israel was going to attack Iran with US support to some degree regardless of what they did at the negotiating table”, he told Al Jazeera. Therefore, both the US and the Europeans must reflect that reality.
Describe snapback.
The current crisis can be traced back to Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal during his first term in 2018.
Iran was required to halt its nuclear program in exchange for lifting international sanctions against its economy under the terms of the 2015 agreement, which is now known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
However, the deal included a “snapback” mechanism to reimpose a number of UN sanctions in order to ensure that Iran can be punished quickly if it violates it.
The mechanism gave any signatory to the agreement – the US, UK, Germany, France, Russia or China – the power to kickstart a process to revive six UN Security Council sanctions resolutions.
Additionally, the snapback has a veto-proof effect, preventing Russia and China, both of which are Iranian allies, from preventing the sanctions from being lifted.
Due to Washington’s disengagement from the JCPOA, the US attempted to activate the snapback clause in 2020, but the attempt failed.
Since the US exit in 2018, Iran has been gradually escalating its nuclear programme, but Iranian officials insist that the country is not seeking a nuclear weapon.
The UN’s decision to resuscitate Iran on Thursday appears to be in response to the country’s decision to ratify the snapback agreement, which was signed ten years ago.
According to experts, the governments of Paris, London, and Berlin essentially invoke a provision from a long-abandoned agreement to impose UN sanctions on Iran.
Sina Toossi, senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, said the snapback was included in the JCPOA to ensure that all sides abide by the deal, but European powers are using it to further pressure Iran.
According to Toossi, “the US and Europe have always been just brute power,” according to Toossi.
It doesn’t matter anything about legal relationships, history, or international norms. They just want to use this instrument to unilaterally reimpose sanctions on Iran”.
What is Europe’s desire?
However, three conditions have been set out for a six-month delay in the snapback sanctions by France, Germany, and the UK.
The demands are for Iran to resume direct talks with the US, restore full cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog, and disclose the new location for its heavily enriched uranium after the US and Israeli strikes.
Iran may have moved the material before the US bombed its nuclear sites, but some US reports suggest that the uranium stockpiles are buried beneath the now-damaged nuclear facilities.
Analysts claim that the Iranian leadership must accept the European conditions, even though they appear reasonable on the surface.
The European powers want Tehran to recommit to negotiations with Washington, without assurances from the US and Israel that they wouldn’t attack again.
Tehran’s full cooperation with the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was terminated after Tehran’s watchdog failed to condemn the US and Israeli attacks, which Tehran claimed were in violation of international law.
Iran earlier this month re-entertained some IAEA inspectors, but the UN agency has not yet inspected or examined the damage done to Iran’s enrichment facilities.
As for the uranium, Iran fears that disclosing the location of the stockpiles will only invite Israel or the US to bomb them.
If Iran’s program is set back even further by US or Israeli strikes on those facilities, Costello claimed in a statement to Al Jazeera. “If they make the location of that enriched uranium very clearly known to the wider world, including US and Israel, that is a blinking target for follow-up US or Israeli strikes on those facilities.”
Therefore, it becomes very challenging for Iran to reach such an agreement because that hasn’t been ruled out.
Impact of snapback
The three European countries argued that Iran’s nuclear program poses a “clear threat to international peace and security” and that the demands must be made.
Iran’s non-compliance with the JCPOA is unavoidable, and its locations are outside the scope of IAEA monitoring, the nations’ statements read in a statement.
“Iran has no civilian justification for its high enriched uranium stockpile … which is also unaccounted for by the IAEA”.
Tehran refutes that claim, claiming that the European powers had violated the 2015 agreement first by accepting the US’s decision to impose secondary sanctions on Iran’s economy in 2018.
The majority of nations and businesses around the world impose US sanctions out of fear of self-imposition.
The Iranian economy is already reeling under heavy US sanctions with global implications.
However, the UN sanctions, which include an arms embargo, could lead to unilateral sanctions from other nations. They may also increase investor distrust of Iran’s economy. Already, the Iranian rial fell sharply after Thursday’s announcement.
The snapback is another psychological shock to the economy, Toossi said, adding that there is more currency depreciation.
Europe becomes hawkish.
Since the turn of the 21st century, European countries have been seen as a moderating influence on Washington’s hawkish impulses towards Iran.
European leaders had vehemently opposed Trump’s exit from the JCPOA in 2018 despite abide by US sanctions.
However, France, Germany, and the UK appear to have taken a stronger position against Tehran since Trump’s return to office in January.
In June, European powers not only failed to condemn Israel’s unprovoked war on Iran, but they also seemed to endorse it. Even Chancellor Friedrich Merz claimed that the assault benefits both Germany and the West.
He claimed that Israel is performing “dirty work” for everyone of us.
Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, a think tank that promotes diplomacy, said Europe’s new posture towards Iran is linked to its broader relationship with the US.
Iran has been accused of providing drones to Russia in order to defeat Ukraine, so Parsi claimed that now Europe poses a threat to Tehran.
He added that US sanctions have virtually destroyed all trade between Europe and Iran.
“Iran simply does not matter that much for Europeans”, he told Al Jazeera in a TV interview.
Given how strained the transatlantic relationship is right now, I believe doing something that endows Europe with the hardline elements in the Trump administration is something that is regarded as valuable in Europe.
The nuclear conflict is still ongoing, for the time being. The US continues to demand that Iran dismantle its nuclear programme, while Tehran insists on maintaining uranium enrichment domestically.
The three European countries invoke a provision of the JCPOA that grants Iran the right to enrichment of uranium, according to Toossi, but they are using it to comply with the US’s demand for no more enrichment.
