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Iran nuclear deal commission meets to try to save accord
VIENNA, Feb 26, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – The remaining parties to the faltering
Iran nuclear deal will meet in Vienna on Wednesday in their first gathering
after Britain, France and Germany launched a dispute process over Tehran’s
successive pullbacks.
The meeting comes as the parties try to find a way to save the landmark
2015 agreement, which has been crumbling since the US withdrew from it in
2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran.
The Europeans hope to persuade Tehran to come back into line with the deal
curbing Iran’s nuclear programme after Tehran made a series of steps away in
protest at the US pull-out.
Wednesday’s meeting at political directors’ level, convening the commission
set up by the deal, will be chaired by EU senior official Helga Schmid.
“This is a chance though not of 100 percent to stop escalation before it is
too late,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted as saying by the
Russian Embassy in Vienna on Twitter.
In its last announcement in early January, Tehran said it would no longer
observe limits on the number of centrifuges used to enrich uranium.
It was its fifth step away from the deal since US President Donald Trump’s
withdrawal and led to Germany, Britain and France triggering the dispute
process on January 14.
The process spells out several steps, the last one of which is notifying
the UN Security Council. UN sanctions would then automatically “snap back”
after 30 days unless the Security Council voted to stop it.
– ‘Far from a result’ –
A diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP that no time table
had been fixed for solving the dispute, adding “we are still far from a
result”.
“We all want to save the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the
deal is known) so that the inspectors can continue their work in Iran,” the
diplomat said, referring to the inspections by the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA).
The Vienna-based UN nuclear agency has been tasked with monitoring the
deal’s implementation and issues regular reports, the latest of which is
expected within days.
Western diplomats recognise it is highly unlikely Iran will heed calls to
come back into full compliance without substantial concessions in return —
such as an end to US sanctions or Europe taking measures to offset their
economic impact.
But they hope the use of the dispute process will convince Iran not to make
any more moves away from the deal, giving space for back-channel diplomacy
aimed at bringing Washington and Tehran back into alignment.
The diplomat told AFP that Iran could also “at least freeze its uranium
stocks” as a possible positive outcome of the current discussions.
At a major international security conference in Munich earlier this month,
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Tehran would be prepared to
move back towards the deal if Europe provides “meaningful” economic benefits.
Europe has set up a special trading mechanism called Instex to try to
enable legitimate humanitarian trade with Iran, but it has yet to complete
any transactions and Tehran regards it as inadequate.
The renewed US sanctions have almost entirely isolated Iran from the
international financial system, driven away oil buyers and plunged the
country into a severe recession.
BSS/AFP/MSY/1150 hrs