According to a newly released report by the Guardian, the three European members of the Iran nuclear deal known as the JCPOA plan to violate the deal and refuse to lift missView Postile-related sanctions against Iran over Tehran’s drone supplies to Russia.
This Sunday, a report by the Guardian revealed that UK, France and Germany, the three European members of the Iran nuclear deal, plan to refuse to lift missile-related sanctions against Iran, a move that is a violation of the nuclear deal.
The reason, as the report noted, is mostly Iran’s several cases of transferring combat drones to Russia to be used against Ukraine, among other things. “The justification cited by EU and British diplomats included Iran’s own breach of the accord, Iran’s sale of drones to Russia for use in its invasion of Ukraine, and the possible future transfers to Russia of Iran’s ballistic missiles,” the report noted.
According to the text of the JCPOA, sanctions against Iran’s missile program were supposed to be lifted in this coming October as they have a negative impact on the country’s economy and conventional military program.
To read between the lines, the EU sanctions are due to expire on 18 October under the UN Security Council resolution 2231 that enshrined the 2015 nuclear deal. The sanctions “called upon” Iran not to do anything to develop ballistic missiles that could carry nuclear weapons.
Will JCPOA survive this new shock?
Back in June, Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) accused Iran of non-compliance with the JCPOA and said that Tehran had not implemented its nuclear-related commitments under the JCPOA since February 2021. Furthermore, he noted that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium has risen by over a quarter in three months.
“Iran has accumulated 114.1 kilograms of 60-percent enriched uranium—more than quadruple the amount that the IAEA considers a “significant quantity” of highly enriched uranium needed to produce a single compact nuclear explosive. Iran’s total stockpile of enriched uranium is over 14 times the permitted limit of JCPOA.” Grossi said, adding that “the inventory of enriched uranium is growing at a very fast pace, and the activities are also growing”.
Iran, however, has its own reasons to not respect the JCPOA as it was first the United States that disregarded the 2231 resolution and unilaterally pulled out of the nuclear deal.
It was in 2018 that the US former president Donald Trump took Washington out of the nuclear deal and re-imposed heavy sanctions against Tehran. Iran says that though the UK, Germany and France remained within the deal, it has only been on paper and the Islamic Republic has not been able to enjoy the lifting of sanctions under the JCPOA.
And now, the fate of the European sanctions against Iran’s missile program that are scheduled to expire in less than two months are in limbo, sanctions that for years, had prevented Iran from developing nuclear-capable ballistic missiles and prohibited the buying, selling, or transferring of drones capable of flying beyond 300km to or from Iran without the authorization of the United Nations.
