European foreign ministers will look on Monday for possible ways to protect Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal and reduces tensions between Washington and Tehran, Reuters reported.
The meeting, which held in Brussels, is hoping to bring the old foes back into dialogue before Iran further reduces its commitments under the deal.
In May 2018, US president Donald Trump withdrew from Iran’s nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Tensions have been rising between the two countries since then.
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said on Monday that there are still hopes to prevent the deal from collapsing despite Iran’s recent increase of enriched uranium and the US withdrawal.
“Iran is still a good year away from developing a nuclear bomb. There is still some closing, but small window to keep the deal alive,” Hunt was quoting by Reuters as saying upon arrival for the meeting.
When asked whether Europe will penalize Iran for breaking major parts of the deal, Hunt noted that, “We will and there’s something called a joint commission, which is the mechanism set up in the deal which is what happens when one side thinks the other side has breached it, that will happen very soon.”
The spokesman for Iran’s nuclear agency, Behrouz Kamalvandi, threatened on Monday that his country will return to the situation before 2015 nuclear deal, if Europeans failed to fulfill their own commitments.
Tehran is seeking more economic benefits to be guaranteed by European powers.
