{"id":342034,"date":"2025-08-13T20:21:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T20:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/342034\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T20:21:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T20:21:16","slug":"britain-france-and-germany-threaten-to-reimpose-sanctions-on-iran-as-deadline-nears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/342034\/","title":{"rendered":"Britain, France and Germany threaten to reimpose sanctions on Iran as deadline nears"},"content":{"rendered":"

BERLIN — The top diplomats of Britain, France, and Germany threatened to reimpose sanctions on Iran as an end-of-the-month deadline nears for the country to resume negotiations with the West over its nuclear program<\/a> and cooperation with the United Nations nuclear watchdog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The three countries, known as the E3, wrote in a letter to the United Nations dated Friday that they were willing to trigger a process known as the \u201csnapback\u201d mechanism<\/a>, which allows one of the Western parties to reimpose U.N. sanctions, if Tehran doesn\u2019t comply with its requirements. <\/p>\n

French Foreign Minister Jean-N\u00f6el Barrot posted the letter Wednesday to X. He co-signed it along with top diplomats from Germany and the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

\u201cE3 have always committed to use all diplomatic tools at our disposal to ensure Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon,\u201d the letter said. \u201cWe have made clear that if Iran is not willing to reach a diplomatic solution before the end of August 2025, or does not seize the opportunity of an extension, E3 are prepared to trigger the snapback mechanism.\u201d<\/p>\n

The letter comes following a period of apparent diplomatic deadlock after a 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June, where Israeli and American jets struck some key nuclear-related facilities in the Islamic Republic.<\/p>\n

The countries met with Iranian officials last month<\/a> in Turkey at Iran\u2019s consulate building in Istanbul on the possibility of reimposing international sanctions, lifted in 2015 in exchange for Tehran accepting restrictions and monitoring of its nuclear program.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, said at the time that he hoped that the meeting would see the E3 nations reassess their \u201cprevious unconstructive attitude.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Iranian government didn’t immediately comment Wednesday on the development.<\/p>\n

Since the war, talks with Washington for a new nuclear deal haven’t resumed, and Iran has since suspended ties<\/a> with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog<\/a>, following the attacks. The IAEA\u2019s first visit to Iran since the war didn’t entail any visits to nuclear facilities Monday, and cooperation wasn’t officially restored.<\/p>\n

One of the three countries opting to trigger the snapback mechanism would renew sanctions on Iran, but Tehran renewing cooperation with the Vienna-based IAEA and addressing concerns about its highly-enriched uranium stockpile would delay it<\/a>, according to a diplomat who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity following July\u2019s meeting in Istanbul.<\/p>\n

Iran has had limited IAEA inspections<\/a> in the past as a pressure tactic in negotiating with the West and it is unclear how soon talks between Tehran and Washington for a deal over its nuclear program will resume.<\/p>\n

German Foreign Ministry spokesperson Josef Hinterseher on Wednesday said that the letter \u201conce again underlines that the legal preconditions for snapback have long existed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur position and our appeal is, very clearly, that Iran still has the choice of deciding to return to diplomacy \u2026 and full cooperation with the IAEA,\u201d he told reporters at a regular news conference in Berlin.<\/p>\n

U.S. intelligence agencies and the IAEA had assessed Iran last had an organized nuclear weapons program in 2003, though Tehran had been enriching uranium up to 60% \u2014 a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.<\/p>\n

The IAEA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Kareem Chehayeb reported from Beirut. Geir Moulson contributed to this report from Berlin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN — The top diplomats of Britain, France, and Germany threatened to reimpose sanctions on Iran as an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342035,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[121710,3907,2000,299,36,4179,40,75715,285,26933,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-342034","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-121710","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-france","13":"tag-general-news","14":"tag-immigration","15":"tag-israel-iran-war","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-sanctions-and-embargoes","18":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115023320344486965","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}