{"id":78747,"date":"2020-01-18T00:01:42","date_gmt":"2020-01-18T05:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/persian-heritage.com\/wordpress\/?p=78747"},"modified":"2020-04-05T09:27:30","modified_gmt":"2020-04-05T14:27:30","slug":"is-european-unity-on-iran-nuclear-deal-starting-to-crack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2020\/01\/18\/is-european-unity-on-iran-nuclear-deal-starting-to-crack\/","title":{"rendered":"Is European Unity on Iran Nuclear Deal Starting to Crack?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-78748 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/persian-heritage.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/BarjamWEB.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"290\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/BarjamWEB.jpg 290w, https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/BarjamWEB-150x103.jpg 150w, https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/BarjamWEB-24x17.jpg 24w, https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/BarjamWEB-36x25.jpg 36w, https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/BarjamWEB-48x33.jpg 48w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 290px) 100vw, 290px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>VOA &#8211; LONDON &#8211; There are signs that cracks are beginning to appear in European unity over its backing of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA, as allies come under growing pressure from the United States to abandon the agreement in the wake of Tehran\u2019s downing of a passenger jet January\u00a08. The 2015 deal, signed by Iran, the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, lifted most sanctions on Iran in return for strict limits on nuclear fuel enrichment. U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal and reimposed sanctions in 2018, citing concerns about Iran\u2019s missile program. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Tuesday that the nuclear agreement could be replaced with what he called &#8220;the Trump deal.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy point to our American friends is, look, somehow or other, we&#8217;ve got to stop the Iranians acquiring a nuclear weapon,\u201d Johnson said in a BBC interview. \u201cI think that&#8217;s what the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreement does, the JCPOA. But if we&#8217;re going to get rid of it, then we need a replacement. Let&#8217;s replace it with the Trump deal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Tuesday that the nuclear agreement could be replaced with what he called &#8220;the Trump deal.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy point to our American friends is, look, somehow or other, we&#8217;ve got to stop the Iranians acquiring a nuclear weapon,\u201d Johnson said in a BBC interview. \u201cI think that&#8217;s what the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreement does, the JCPOA. But if we&#8217;re going to get rid of it, then we need a replacement. Let&#8217;s replace it with the Trump deal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Trump has said he wants a deal that curbs Iran\u2019s missile program as well as its nuclear activities. However, Tehran has flatly rejected entering such negotiations.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking in Parliament, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said a &#8220;broader deal&#8221; would tackle issues besides Iran\u2019s nuclear program.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFirst of all, it is Iran that is threatening the JCPOA with its systematic noncompliance. The prime minister fully supports the JCPOA and bringing Iran back into full compliance,\u201d Raab told lawmakers Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn fact, it&#8217;s not just President Trump\u00a0but also [French]\u00a0President Emmanuel Macron\u00a0who have argued for a broader deal with Iran, which first of all, addresses some of the defects in the JCPOA, which is not a perfect deal, but is, in our view, the best deal we&#8217;ve got on the table as of now. And secondly, would address the wider concerns that the U.S. and many other states, including the United Kingdom, have about Iran&#8217;s broader destabilizing activities in the region,\u201d Raab added.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nThis week, Richard Goldberg, a former Trump security adviser who ended his role earlier this month, said Washington could make a post-Brexit trade deal with Britain conditional on support for the United States\u2019 stance on Iran.<\/p>\n<p>Britain will face difficult decisions after it leaves the EU, said Erica Moret, chair of the Geneva International Sanctions Network.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The U.K. will have a very difficult decision to make on a case-by-case basis when it comes to whether or not to remain aligned with European allies who tend to be more like-minded in terms of foreign policy considerations, or whether to prioritize commercial interests. And as we move forward, I think this is really going to be, the Iran case will be a very interesting litmus test for the U.K.&#8221;<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nIran announced this month it would ignore all restrictions on its nuclear enrichment activities, but insisted\u00a0it was\u00a0permitted to do so under the 2015 deal, because the U.S. was the first signatory to break the agreement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe nuclear deal \u2026 was written with full knowledge of the fact that it might be violated by various parties. That is why we put in mechanisms in order to make sure that if one party or several parties violated the deal, we could take measures in order to keep it alive. Iran took those measures some time ago in May of 2018 and those measures are working,\u201d Iran\u2019s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Thursday.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nEuropean signatories have formally triggered a dispute mechanism against Iran that is part of the nuclear deal. That process could end at the U.N. Security Council, with a so-called snapback of all U.N. sanctions on Iran.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nIran would then likely abandon the 2015 deal altogether, said Peter Jenkins, a former British ambassador to the U.N.\u2019s nuclear watchdog who previously conducted negotiations with Iran.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Iranians would start making use of the far more advanced centrifuges that they now possess to produce enriched uranium,\u201d Jenkins told VOA. \u201cAnd what the Americans call the &#8220;breakout&#8221; time \u2014\u00a0which is the amount of time it would take them to go from zero enrichment to 90 percent enrichment, which is weapons grade \u2014\u00a0with these more advanced centrifuges\u00a0would be much shorter. They could do it much more quickly than was the case a decade ago.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>VOA &#8211; LONDON &#8211; There are signs that cracks are beginning to appear in European unity over its backing of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA, as allies come under growing pressure from the United States to abandon the agreement in the wake of Tehran\u2019s downing of a passenger jet January\u00a08. The 2015 deal, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latests"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}