Iran threatened to exit the landmark Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970 after three European powers said the regime had violated the 2015 nuclear deal.
The United Kingdom, France, and Germany last week accused Iran of breaching the accord after the regime announced it would not comply with restrictions against enriching uranium. Tehran responded to the accusations by threatening to ditch the treaty altogether.
“If the Europeans continue their improper behavior or send Iran’s file to the Security Council, we will withdraw from the NPT,” Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said on Monday.
Zarif, who negotiated the 2015 agreement with President Barack Obama’s administration, made those comments in an apparent effort to deter European parties from punishing Iran’s violations by renewing international sanctions that were waived when the Obama-era deal took effect. European allies launched the dispute resolution process after a year of trying to convince Iran to honor the deal despite President Trump’s withdrawal from the pact.
“If Europeans keep up their actions based on political games, we have various options because their actions lack legal standing,” Zarif said, as reported by state-run media.
The specter of Iran withdrawing from a global treaty that bans nuclear devices stokes the fear that has animated European opposition to Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign. The U.K., France, and Germany, which agreed to the 2015 deal alongside China, Russia, and the European Union, credit the pact with defusing a nuclear crisis in the Middle East.
“We are going to be in front of the alternative that the Europeans, and the Obama administration, wanted to avoid: the alternative between an Iranian bomb or bombing Iran,” retired Ambassador Gerard Araud, the former French envoy to the United States, told the Washington Examiner.
That division prevented the Trump team and European allies from finalizing a “supplemental agreement” to the nuclear deal. American officials had planned to renew sanctions on Iran if the regime took advantage of a “sunset clause” that allows Tehran to expand its nuclear program after 2025. Western European allies worried that such a plan would provoke Iran to leave the deal immediately.
“It’s also what we have repeatedly said to the Trump administration — ‘You know, if you denounce the agreement, at some point, the Iranians are going to move forward on their nuclear program,’” Araud said.
Iranian officials have revealed that while European allies sought to dissuade them from leaving the deal, Tehran’s priority was preventing the Europeans from leaving the deal and renewing United Nations Security Council sanctions in addition to the Trump sanctions.
“Had Iran pulled out from the deal, the U.N. sanctions against us would’ve been back,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said last week. “This would’ve played into U.S. President Donald Trump’s hands.”
The U.S., European, and Iranian strategies could come to a head now that the three Western European countries lodged a formal complaint that Iran violated the deal. That decision has raised American hopes that the European allies will invoke provisions that would renew all international sanctions, despite past transatlantic disagreements over Trump’s Iran policy.
“We look forward to working with them quickly and would expect that the U.N. sanctions will snap back into place,” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said last week.
