Snapback

The US on Wednesday announced new sanctions on dozens of individuals and entities tied to Iran’s nuclear and weapons programs, in support of the recent “snapback” sanctions by the UN on Tehran, Anadolu reports.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement that 44 individuals and entities have been designated, including five people and one entity allegedly linked to Iran’s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND), which he described as the successor to Iran’s pre-2004 nuclear weapons program.

The US also imposed additional export restrictions on 26 entities and three procurement-linked addresses.

“These actions highlight the importance of the September 27 re-imposition of sanctions and other restrictions on Iran pursuant to multiple UN Security Council resolutions,” Rubio said. “We will not hesitate to hold accountable anyone who supports Tehran’s proliferation activities.”

The measures come after France, Germany and the UK invoked a “snapback” mechanism under UN Security Council Resolution 2231, restoring sanctions that had been suspended since the 2015 nuclear deal.

READ: Iran slams reimposition of UN sanctions, accuses Europeans of abusing nuclear deal

Soldiers carrying the coffin of slain Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh during funeral procession inside the Iranian defense ministry in Tehran, Iran, in 2020. European nations imposed “snapback” sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program. File photo by Iranian Defense Ministry/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 28 (UPI) — A decade after they were lifted, economic and military sanctions were reimposed on Iran Sunday over its nuclear program.

Britain, France and Germany have accused Iran of “continued nuclear escalation,” and reactivated what is known as a “snapback mechanism” over Iran’s lack of cooperation to de-escalate the country’s nuclear program.

Iran suspended inspections of its nuclear facilities under terms of a 2015 deal after Israel and the United States bombed several of the country’s nuclear sites in June.

Iranian President Masound Pezeshkian has continued to maintain that his country has no intentions of developing nuclear weapons, and made the claim again last week.

Pezeshkian has called the reimposition of sanctions “unfair, unjust and illegal,” and a setback to Iran’s fledgling relations with the West.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action limits Iran’s nuclear facilities, stockpiles of enriched uranium and the amount of research it is allowed to undertake. It allows Iran to develop nuclear infrastructure, but not weapons.

Iran escalated its nuclear program after President Donald Trump pulled out of the JCPOA during his first term in 2018.

European negotiators told the U.N. Security Council in August that Iran had violated “the near entirety of its JCPOA commitments,” and gave the country a month’s warning to scale back its nuclear program before Russia assumed control of the Security Council in October.

Several meetings with Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi have produced no progress in meeting key European demands, including evidence that Iran is working on a diplomatic solution, complying with inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency and disclosing the whereabouts of more than 400 kg of highly enriched uranium.

The European nations have also called for resumed talks between Iran and the United States.

Washington, DC – The decision by European countries to impose “snapback” sanctions against Iran may further exacerbate international tensions, experts say, as fears of a regional war loom over the Middle East.

On Thursday, Germany, France and the United Kingdom – Europe’s largest economies – triggered a 30-day process to reimpose sanctions over what they called “significant” violations of a 2015 agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear programme.

“What we’re heading toward is the snapback scenario where the sanctions come back and Iran is likely to retaliate in some way that’s unhelpful,” said Ryan Costello, the policy director at the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).

And the tensions could escalate into renewed violence after the Israeli attacks on Iran earlier this year. “It’s another kind of domino falling on the way toward the June war reigniting,” Costello said.

The United States, which bombed three nuclear facilities in June as part of an Israeli assault on Iran, has welcomed the European countries’ move.

But the administration of US President Donald Trump has also kept the door open for talks with Iran.

“The United States remains available for direct engagement with Iran – in furtherance of a peaceful, enduring resolution to the Iran nuclear issue,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement. “Snapback does not contradict our earnest readiness for diplomacy, it only enhances it.”

Costello, however, underscored that Iran was at the table before Israel launched its 12-day war.

A round of nuclear talks between US and Iranian officials was set to take place on June 15. But Israeli bombs started falling on Tehran two days before the scheduled negotiations, postponing them indefinitely.

Costello said that, in order to return to the nuclear discussions, the US and Europe first have to rebuild trust with Iran.

“The overwhelming sentiment in Iran is that those talks were all a ruse – that Israel was going to attack Iran with US support to some degree regardless of what they did at the negotiating table,” he told Al Jazeera. “So both the Europeans and the US have to reflect that reality.”

What is snapback?

The current crisis can be traced back to Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal during his first term in 2018.

The 2015 accord – formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – compelled Iran to curb its nuclear programme in exchange for lifting international sanctions against its economy.

But to ensure that Iran can be penalised quickly if it violates the agreement, the deal included a “snapback” mechanism to reimpose a series of United Nations sanctions.

The mechanism gave any signatory to the agreement – the US, UK, Germany, France, Russia or China – the power to kickstart a process to revive six UN Security Council sanctions resolutions.

And the snapback is veto-proof, meaning Russia and China, both allies of Iran, cannot block the restoration of the sanctions.

In 2020, the US tried to activate the snapback clause of the JCPOA, but the effort failed because Washington was no longer a party in the agreement.

Since the US exit in 2018, Iran has been gradually escalating its nuclear programme, but Iranian officials insist that the country is not seeking a nuclear weapon.

Thursday’s decision to reimpose UN sanctions on Iran appears to be timed against the expiration of the snapback provision in October, which marks 10 years after the nuclear deal came into effect.

Experts say the governments in Paris, London and Berlin are essentially invoking a provision from a long-abandoned agreement to secure UN sanctions against Iran.

Sina Toossi, senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, said the snapback was included in the JCPOA to ensure that all sides abide by the deal, but European powers are using it to further pressure Iran.

“The overall US and European approach to Iran has been just brute power – like might is right,” Toossi told Al Jazeera.

“Anything about legal contacts and history and international norms doesn’t matter. They just want to use this instrument to unilaterally reimpose sanctions on Iran.”

What does Europe want?

France, Germany and the UK, however, have outlined three conditions to delay the snapback sanctions by six months.

The demands are for Iran to resume direct talks with the US, restore full cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog, and disclose the new location for its heavily enriched uranium after the US and Israeli strikes.

Some US reports have suggested that the uranium stockpiles are buried under the now-damaged nuclear facilities, but Iran may have also moved the material before the US bombed its nuclear sites.

Analysts say that, while the European conditions may seem reasonable on the surface, they are challenging for the Iranian leadership to agree to.

The European powers want Tehran to recommit to negotiations with Washington, without assurances from the US and Israel that they wouldn’t attack again.

Tehran had also suspended full cooperation with the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) after the watchdog failed to condemn the US and Israeli attacks, which it said breached international law.

Earlier this month, Iran allowed some IAEA inspectors back into the country, but the UN agency still has not accessed or assessed the damage at Iran’s enrichment facilities.

As for the uranium, Iran fears that disclosing the location of the stockpiles will only invite Israel or the US to bomb them.

“If they make the location of that enriched uranium very clearly known to the wider world, including US and Israel, then it’s a blinking target for follow-up US or Israeli strikes on those facilities to set Iran’s programme back further,” Costello told Al Jazeera.

“So because that hasn’t been ruled out, it becomes very difficult for Iran to strike such an agreement.”

Impact of snapback

But the three European powers argued that the demands are necessary because Iran’s nuclear programme constitutes a “clear threat to international peace and security”.

“Today, Iran’s non-compliance with the JCPOA is clear and deliberate, and sites of major proliferation concern in Iran are outside of IAEA monitoring,” the countries said in a statement.

“Iran has no civilian justification for its high enriched uranium stockpile … which is also unaccounted for by the IAEA.”

Tehran has rejected that argument, saying that European powers had breached the 2015 agreement first by accepting the US’s 2018 decision to restore secondary sanctions on Iran’s economy.

Most countries and businesses around the world enforce US sanctions out of fear of being sanctioned themselves.

The Iranian economy is already reeling under heavy US sanctions with global implications.

But the UN sanctions – which include an arms embargo – could enable unilateral sanctions by other countries. They may also further undermine trust in the Iranian economy. Already, the Iranian rial fell sharply after Thursday’s announcement.

“There is more currency depreciation because of the snapback; it’s another psychological shock to the economy,” said Toossi.

Europe goes hawkish

Since the turn of the 21st century, European countries have been seen as a moderating influence on Washington’s hawkish impulses towards Iran.

Despite abiding by the US sanctions, European leaders had vocally opposed Trump’s exit from the JCPOA in 2018.

But since Trump returned to office in January, France, Germany and the UK appear to have taken a harder line against Tehran.

In June, European powers not only failed to condemn Israel’s unprovoked war on Iran, but they also seemed to endorse it. Chancellor Friedrich Merz even suggested Germany and the West are benefitting from the assault.

“This is dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us,” he said.

Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, a think tank that promotes diplomacy, said Europe’s new posture towards Iran is linked to its broader relationship with the US.

Iran has been accused of supplying Russia with drones to use in its war against Ukraine, so now Europe sees Tehran as a threat, Parsi said.

He also noted that nearly all trade between Europe and Iran has been destroyed by US sanctions.

“Iran simply does not matter that much for Europeans,” he told Al Jazeera in a TV interview.

“So doing something that endears Europe with the hardline elements in the Trump administration, I think, is something that is seen as valuable in Europe … given how tremendously strained the current transatlantic relationship is right now.”

For now, the nuclear tensions continue to grind on. The US continues to demand that Iran dismantle its nuclear programme, while Tehran insists on maintaining uranium enrichment domestically.

Toossi said there’s an irony in the whole affair: The three European powers are invoking a provision of the JCPOA that grants Iran the right to uranium enrichment, but they are using it to align with the US demand for no more enrichment.

“The hypocrisies and contradictions are just immense in all of this,” he said.

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.”