John Noel Barrow announced on Tuesday that his country, along with its partners Germany and the UK, will invoke the so-called “snap-back mechanism” by the end of August if concrete development is not gained in Iran’s nuclear program.
According to Reuters, Barrow cited these remarks before the meeting of the European Union’s ministers.
Seyed Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s Foreign Minister, in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde, said that “threatening to sanction does not help diplomacy. If Europe is really pursuing playing a pivotal role, it must show its independence and neutrality in performance. The sign of this is the condemnation of the aggression of the Zionist regime and the U.S. on the nuclear sites that were under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Did France act as an independent country? Under the current conditions, how can Iran be urged to observe the rules of the international game?”
Araghchi emphasized: “Europe can play a constructive role in safeguarding the nuclear agreement as well as reducing tensions, conditioned that it condemns the aggressive behavior of Israel.”
Iran’s senior official said that “we support the constructive role of the three European countries in rebuilding the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), conditioned that they avoid triggering and non-constructive actions such as ‘snapback.’”
Araghchi said that “the effect of a snapback is similar to a military attack. Such an action, in our view, is the end of Europe and France’s role in Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.”
Following the report of the director-general of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, Iran suspended its cooperation with the agency, regarding the report as biased, which paved the ground for the recent aggressive attack of the U.S. and the Zionist regime on Iran. Grossi also did not perform his legal duty in safeguarding Iran’s atomic facilities. Reacting to these events, Barrow said that “we demand the resumption of activity of the agency’s inspectors and the beginning of a diplomatic trend to achieve a negotiated solution and framework for ballistic missiles.”
Barrow, dismissing the fact that Iran stopped performing its voluntary nuclear commitments in response to the U.S.’s unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018, being exposed to Washington’s sanctions and breach of commitment by the European partners in terms of neutralizing the effects of these sanctions, claimed that “Iran has violated its obligations.” He said that “France and its partners are entitled to resume international armed, banking, and nuclear facilities’ sanctions that had been canceled 10 years ago if Iran does not guarantee a firm, concrete, and fact-checkable commitment. We will do it by the end of August.”
