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Scaling down
Mirror company
earlier this week that officials from remaining nuclear deal signatories China,
Russia, France, Germany, the UK and Iran will meet in Vienna on December 6 to discuss how to uphold the deal.
Iran has in recent months been scaling down its compliance with the accord with an eye on resigning from it if the Europeans do not respond to the non-compliance pressure by providing economic assistance.
Responding to the latest French position, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said on state television: “Iran’s scaling back of its nuclear commitments [outlined in the 2015 deal] was implementation of its legal rights to react to America’s illegal and unilateral exit of the deal and the European parties’ failure to fulfil their obligations.
“Under these circumstances, the deal does not allow triggering of the mechanism by the European parties to the deal ... such remarks by the French official are irresponsible and not constructive.”
The mechanism involves a party referring a nuclear deal compliance dispute to a joint commission comprising of Iran, Russia, China, the UK, France and Germany (the remaining nuclear deal members) as well as the European Union. If the commission cannot resolve the issue, then the dispute is sent to the UN Security Council.
If the Security Council does not vote within 30 days to continue sanctions relief, sanctions brought forward under previous UN resolutions would be reimposed in a “snap-back”.
France is concerned by Tehran’s mounting non-compliance with the nuclear deal, abandoned by the US in May 2018.
For Sweden and the rest of the EU, it is essential that Iran does not leave the JCPOA, the Stockholm government added.
In early September, a French diplomatic source said Instex would not work until Tehran set up a mirror company and met international standards against money-laundering and terrorism financing.
Much proposed Instex trading has been conceived as bartering and both Iran and Russia—which has previously suggested it might join the scheme—have said the bartering should be allowed to include Iranian oil, but Europe has not given its consent to such a move given that it would certainly incite US officials who are engaged in an effort to drive all oil exports from Iran off world markets. The US claims the exising nuclear deal is not restrictive enough on Iran’s nuclear development programme and does not place required curbs on the Iranians’ ballistic missile development programme or on Tehran’s backing of various militias across Middle East conflict zones.
However, Iran was in full compliance with the accord when the US walked out of it, breaching diplomatic convention.
9 IRAN Country Report December 2019 www.intellinews.com
