European officials told Iran on Wednesday it had yet to take the actions needed to stop the return of United Nations sanctions over its nuclear program, warning that time was running out.
The comments from the German Foreign Ministry and the European Union came after a call between Iran and representatives of France, Germany and the United Kingdom, as well as the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas.
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British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz
(Photo: Toby Melville/Pool Photo via AP, Christophe Petit, Tesson/Pool/AFP, Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
“The window for finding a diplomatic solution on Iran’s nuclear issue is closing really fast,” Kallas said in a statement. “Iran must show credible steps toward addressing the demands of France, the U.K. and Germany, and this means demonstrating full cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency and allowing inspections of all nuclear sites without delay.”
The German Foreign Ministry separately wrote on the social platform X that “Iran has yet to take the reasonable and precise actions necessary” to stop the reimposition of U.N. sanctions.
In a statement issued hours later, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi again asserted that the reimposition of U.N. sanctions was “lacking any legal or logical justification.” He also pointed to the fact that Iran and the IAEA earlier reached a deal mediated by Egypt to grant the U.N. watchdog access to all Iranian nuclear sites and for Tehran to report on the whereabouts of all its nuclear material.
However, it remains unclear when Iran will make that report. And Araghchi in his statement offered no other routes to satisfying the Europeans’ concerns.
“It is now up to the other parties to seize this opportunity to keep the diplomatic path open and avert an avoidable crisis, showing seriousness and belief in diplomacy,” he said.
A 12-day war launched by Israel against Iran in June saw both the Israelis and the Americans bomb Iranian nuclear sites, throwing into question the status of Tehran’s stockpile of uranium enriched nearly to weapons-grade levels.
The process to reimplement sanctions on Iran, termed a “snapback” by the diplomats who negotiated it into Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, was designed to be veto-proof at the U.N. It will take effect at the end of September unless the U.N. Security Council agrees to stop it.
It will again freeze Iranian assets abroad, halt arms deals with Tehran and penalize any development of Iran’s ballistic missile program, among other measures, further squeezing the country’s struggling economy.
Using the “snapback” mechanism will likely heighten tensions between Iran and the West in a region still burning over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, particularly after Israel began its ground offensive targeting Gaza City.