Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister, said in local news that a new wave of global sanctions might complicate talks on his country’s nuclear program. His remark could hardly be timed worse, coming a few days before Iran’s scheduled meeting on Friday with E3, the informal grouping of Britain, France and Germany. E3 has warned that they will pursue a “snapback” of U.N. sanctions if Iran’s nuclear disclosures do not impress them before late August. Such a step would revive measures that had been lifted as part of the 2015 deal requiring Iran to curb its nuclear work. Gharibabadi said that Iran will relay its objections to that warning in Istanbul while also asserting that the “snapback” mechanism lacks any “legal grounding.” Iran, he said, will nonetheless keep searching for “common ground and solutions.” The five original states of the nuclear deal remain Russia and China. The U.S. quit the accord in 2018, and Gharibabadi now accuses the Europeans of failing to uphold their part of the bargain once Washington pulled out.“Seven years have passed since the Europeans ceased to uphold their commitments right after the U.S. exited the agreement,” Gharibabadi told the local reporters. He went on to say no one should hold Iran accountable for breaching the accord when the other side has already forsaken it.Iran maintains that its nuclear agenda is strictly civilian, intended for energy generation and medical isotopes. Still, the U.S. and Israel have long insisted that the real aim is the production of a bomb. Earlier this semester, Israeli forces launched a twelve-day campaign against suspected Iranian installations, labeling each strike as a counter-proliferation mission. The attacks reportedly claimed the lives of several senior nuclear scientists and inflicted damage on the enrichment infrastructure. The U.S. subsequently supported Israel, employing airstrikes against three of Iran’s largest civilian driver reactors. The then-President Trump declared that Iranian mastery of nuclear arms was unacceptable and vowed further military action if the nascent program advanced.
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