“CYCLE OF PROVOCATION”
“Iran did not start the cycle of provocation – the Western side could, without passing a resolution … create the atmosphere for negotiations if it really was after talks,” expert Hadi Mohammadi said.
In 2015, Iran and world powers reached an agreement that involved the easing of international sanctions on Tehran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme to guarantee that Tehran could not develop a nuclear weapon – something it has always denied seeking to do.
But the United States unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 under then-president Donald Trump and reimposed biting economic sanctions, which prompted Iran to begin rolling back on its own commitments.
On Thursday, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs Kazem Gharibabadi warned of Iran’s potential next step.
“Iran had announced in an official letter to European countries that it would withdraw from the NPT if the snapback mechanism was activated, and the Security Council sanctions were reinstated,” Gharibabadi said in a late-night interview with state TV.
The 2015 deal contains a “snapback” mechanism that can be triggered in case of “significant non-performance” of its commitments by Iran.
This would allow the United Nations Security Council to reimpose all the sanctions it had imposed between 2006 and 2015 over Tehran’s nuclear activities.
Tehran has since 2021 significantly decreased its cooperation with the agency by deactivating surveillance devices monitoring the nuclear programme and barring UN inspectors.
At the same time, it has ramped up its nuclear activities, including by increasing its stockpiles of enriched uranium and the level of enrichment to 60 per cent.
That level is close, according to the IAEA, to the 90 per cent plus threshold required for a nuclear warhead and substantially higher than the 3.67 per cent limit it agreed to in 2015.
