Sanctions or deal - World - Al-Ahram Weekly

Al-Ahram Weekly

3 days ago

The revival of nuclear negotiations between Iran and Europe is intended to avoid imposing sanctions on Tehran again in October, but there are doubts surrounding the outcome.
Iran has returned to the negotiating table less than two months after the Israeli-American war targeting its nuclear facilities and other military and civilian sites. On Friday, Iranian officials met officials from Britain, France, Germany and the EU at the Iranian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. The three European countries, known as E3, along with Russia and China, are the parties that remain in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signed with Tehran in 2015. The other party to the deal, the US, withdrew unilaterally from the agreement in 2018.
According to JCPOA Iran had agreed to curb its nuclear programme in exchange for global sanctions relief. Lifting the UN-imposed sanctions has a deadline of 18 October 2025, unless the E3 trigger what is called a 'snapback' a month before the deadline. In a bid to avoid triggering a snapback by 18 September, negotiations with Iran have been launched.
Prior to the Istanbul meeting, the Iranians met with Russian and Chinese representatives in Tehran to discuss the same issue. Though no outcome for these meetings was announced, Moscow and Beijing are believed to side with Iran rather than the West.
Before the 12-day war between Israel and Iran in mid-June, the US and Iran held five rounds of indirect talks brokered by the Sultanate of Oman. Negotiations collapsed when Israel started bombing Iran and Iran retaliated by bombing Israel. Later, towards the end of the war, America launched an airforce attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.
The European signatories of JCPOA were sidelined during the American-Iranian negotiations. Despite this the E3 want to help revive those negotiations to restore the 2015 deal with the Americans re-joining it, or reach a new deal to stop Iran from enriching uranium to a weapons-grade level.
Iran is also keen to reach a deal to avoid suffocating sanctions. A Dubai-based commentator told Al-Ahram Weekly that, despite Iranian statements about its 'strong position', their economy is in dire straits and Tehran cannot afford more sanctions. 'Even basic services are deteriorating. Look at the water shortage in last few days and how high temperatures have forced the government to announce a public holiday to ration water,' he said.
But militants in Iran, including hard-line members of parliament, feel that negotiations with the Americans and the West are futile. They do not consider Europeans to be so different from Americans as they collectively support Israeli aggression against Iran.
A European representative went to Istanbul ready to offer Iran an extension of the deadline for the re-imposition of international sanctions for six months if it agrees to conditions including resuming talks with Washington and cooperating with UN nuclear inspectors: the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Iran is asking for guarantees that any negotiation should respect its sovereign right to continue nuclear activity for peaceful purposes, including uranium enrichment. It also wants negotiations to focus mainly on the nuclear issue and sanctions, not extending to its ballistic missile programme.
Towards the end of the indirect talks, the Trump administration switched positions and called for a complete halt of uranium enrichment, not enriching to a lower level of producing uranium for power reactors.
In response to America's withdrawal from JCPOA seven years ago, Iran had increased its enrichment activity beyond what was agreed in the deal in 2015. The deal stipulated enriching uranium to 3.67 per cent with a limit on produced amount. IAEA later said that Iranian enrichment reached 60 per cent. Israel has been claiming that this level is close to the 90 per cent purity needed to produce a nuclear bomb. Iran has always denied it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
Nothing concrete came out of the meeting with the E3, except for the agreement to continue talks. The Europeans introduced a deadline to the talks should they not trigger a snapback: end of August. After the meeting in Istanbul, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi posted on X that Iran and the E3 held 'serious, frank, and detailed' talks, exchanging specific proposals on sanctions relief, the nuclear file, and the controversial snapback mechanism. Gharibabadi led the Iranian delegation at the talks.
The Europeans also demanded that Iran should provide clarifications for 400 kilogrammes of enriched uranium, whose whereabouts have been unknown since last month's strikes by Israel and the US on Iran's nuclear sites. Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei told official news agency IRNA that an IAEA delegation is expected in Tehran soon, but no nuclear site inspections are currently scheduled. Talks will focus on redefining the framework for interaction instead.
That was confirmed by IAEA head Rafael Grossi who said on Friday that Iran has indicated it will be ready to restart technical-level discussions on its nuclear programme. He told reporters in Singapore that the IAEA had proposed that Iran should start discussions of 'the modalities as to how to restart or begin [inspections] again. So this is what we are planning to do, perhaps starting on technical details and later moving onto high-level consultations. So this will not include inspections yet,' Grossi added.
As Israel started bombing Iran, Tehran suspended cooperation with IAEA. The level of damage to Iran's nuclear programme is not yet clear, even as Trump repeatedly said nuclear targets were destroyed by American bombing.
It is not clear if the Europeans will act as a catalyst for the resumption of Iranian-American talks or fail to do so, blaming it on Iranian non-cooperation. If the month's deadline for Tehran to prove positive engagement is not met, escalation is expected. Iran has threatened to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). That will be seen by the US and Israel as a clear sign of Tehran heading towards the production of a nuclear bomb.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 6 August, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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