Three European powers are expected to reimpose punishing United Nations sanctions on Iran for ostensibly not engaging with the international community to reach a deal on its nuclear programme.
Known as the E3, France, Germany and the United Kingdom have given Iran until August 31 to make some tough decisions.
As the deadline looms, observers and analysts fear that reimposing UN sanctions will significantly escalate regional tensions and embolden Israel and the United States to attack Iran again.
Standoff
While the stakes are high, the demands by the E3 – three of the six remaining signatories to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal – aren’t so easy to meet, experts told Al Jazeera.
They want Iran to resume negotiations with the US over its nuclear programme and allow international inspectors back in to monitor sites and stockpiles of highly enriched uranium.
The US quit the nuclear deal in 2018 and reimposed its own sanctions on Iran.
In April and May this year, it entered nuclear talks with Iran, demanding that Iran give up its centrifuges – needed to highly enrich uranium – and “downblend” its current nuclear programme.
Downblending is a process where highly enriched uranium is diluted with low-enriched uranium.
But in June, the US changed its position and demanded that Iran give up its entire nuclear programme, a suggestion Iran rejected outright.
The US suspended talks, and Israel attacked Iran in June, in an apparent attempt to dismember the ruling government. The “12-day war” saw the US join in to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites.
Since then, the US has maintained that Iran must give up its nuclear programme as a precondition for new talks.
Iran has long stated that it has no interest in pursuing a nuclear bomb and that its programme is for civilian purposes.
Moreover, as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran is entitled to enrich uranium for civilian sectors such as energy, cancer research, and other scientific research.
Trita Parsi, Iran expert and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, told Al Jazeera the E3’s demands risk accelerating another round of regional conflict.
“If you restart talks at a moment when you know that talks will fail, then you ensure that military attacks will happen sooner rather than later,” Parsi told Al Jazeera.
Remnants of the JCPOA
The JCPOA was signed between Iran and the members of the UN Security Council (UNSC), plus Germany and the European Union.
The deal stipulated that Iran must not enrich uranium above 3.67 percent, far below weaponisation.
In return, the parties agreed to lift debilitating UN sanctions, yet any one of the signatories could reimpose sanctions unilaterally if they found Iran was not complying with the JCPOA.
When US President Donald Trump pulled his country out of the JCPOA in 2018, Iran accused the US of violating the deal and the Europeans of “indirectly” violating it by not providing options for Iran to avoid US sanctions.
Iran also notified the Europeans and the US that it would increase enrichment levels beyond JCPOA limits.
Experts believe Iran was increasing enrichment to gain leverage with Western states for a future deal, as Al Jazeera previously reported.
And after the 12-day war, Iran denied access to the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is tasked with monitoring Iran’s nuclear sites under the NPT and the JCPOA.
Along with resuming talks with the US, the E3 requires Iran to grant access to IAEA inspectors in return for delaying the triggering of snapback sanctions for another six months.
Some within Iran’s leadership believe the IAEA leaked sensitive information to the US.
“One position coming out of Tehran is that their cooperation with the IAEA over the years prepared the ground for the [US] attacks…because the US and Israel had very clear mapping and info of the programme,” Negar Mortazavi, an expert on Iran with the Center for International Policy (CIP), said.
“There is now a big view in Iran’s domestic political space that maybe we should stop cooperating with the IAEA,” she added.
Iran is reportedly hiding some 400kg (880lb) of 60 percent enriched uranium, a level just below weapons-grade.
Iran views the 60 percent stockpile as its last bargaining chip vis-a-vis Washington, according to Hamidreza Azizi, an expert on Iran and visiting fellow with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWB).
He added that Iran is, therefore, reluctant to disclose the whereabouts of that uranium out of fear of giving up its last source of leverage in future negotiations.
“[The E3] wants complete transparency that removes the ambiguity around Iran’s most sensitive nuclear activities. From their perspective, only this would justify extending the snapback deadline,” Azizi told Al Jazeera.
Zero-sum game
Iran has reached out to the US to resume talks since June, according to CIP’s Mortazavi.
She added that, on the one hand, Iran refuses to project weakness after the war for fear of signalling that it will make concessions if attacked by the US and Israel, while, on the other hand, the US refuses to engage until Iran agrees to “zero enrichment”.
The US is also struggling to save face after Trump declared that Iran’s nuclear programme had been completely destroyed in June, an assessment quickly contradicted by US intelligence.
Yet any resumption of talks would be a clear admission that Iran’s nuclear programme is still very much functional, said Parsi.
Azizi, from SWB, believes that the E3 and Iran should consider reaching a limited and more flexible arrangement to avoid snapback sanctions.
This could entail resuming limited and reversible cooperation with the IAEA and establishing a roadmap for future talks with the US.
However, he’s not optimistic that the E3 will extend such an offer because it would like to locate the stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium, which, in their view, is a serious nuclear proliferation threat.
Iran, for its part, seems ready to accept a deal that grants partial access to the IAEA. Inspectors from the agency reportedly arrived in Tehran on August 27, although the Iranian government said no deal had been reached with the IAEA as of yet.
Effect of sanctions?
If Iran doesn’t meet the E3’s demands, it will come under a conventional arms embargo, face restrictions on its ballistic missile development, and its top officials will have their assets frozen and travel bans issued for them.
Most notably, Iran will be ordered by the UNSC to stop uranium enrichment, as per the JCPOA. This could give Israel and the US the legitimacy of international law to try and “enforce” this order by attacking Iran again, argues Parsi.
“When you have a demand by the UN Security Council [saying] Iran should stop uranium enrichment, it means the US/Israel demand will suddenly have the force of international law behind it,” he told Al Jazeera.
Azizi believes the combination of snapback sanctions, Iran’s hidden stockpiles of enriched uranium and lack of IAEA inspections could lead to renewed conflict.
“Israel has already demonstrated its willingness to use force again … If Iran were to resume enrichment at scale or show signs of moving toward weaponisation under the cover of opacity, the risk of another Israeli attack would rise sharply,” he told Al Jazeera.
What’s more, Iran would be prohibited under UN resolutions from importing weapons from Russia or China, which, in theory, would make the government and its people more vulnerable to external threats.
China and Russia could ignore the sanctions, arguing they were an abusive attempt to force Iran to give up its nuclear programme.
UN resolutions are often ignored by the US, its allies, and other world powers to protect their interests.
Parsi argues that the E3’s threat of restoring UN sanctions is driven more by wanting to curry favour with the Trump administration than by any real concern for de-escalating tensions in the Middle East.
“Europeans want to get themselves on the same page with the US,” he told Al Jazeera.
“At the end of the day, what’s far more important to the Europeans is that they maintain good relations with the US, not work [to deescalate the situation] with Iran.”