The European Union will defend the Iran nuclear accord despite Tehran\u2019s decision to backtrack on its commitments in response to US sanctions, diplomats believe, but European powers expect it to collapse without a deal to sell Iranian oil to China or India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Britain, France and \nGermany, which signed the 2015 deal along with the United States, China \nand Russia, are determined to show they can compensate for last year\u2019s \nUS withdrawal from the accord, protect trade and still prevent Tehran \nfrom developing a nuclear bomb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But with Iran\u2019s economy dependent\n on crude exports that are traded in U.S. dollars, a promised European \ntrade channel to bypass American sanctions has proved complicated, is \nnot yet operational, and may never be able to handle oil sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis\n situation now risks deteriorating, but it will be step by step and not a\n collapse all in one go,\u201d said a senior European diplomat. A French \ndiplomat talked of a \u201cnegative spiral\u201d in which trade in food and \nmedicines was simply not enough, while another European envoy spoke of \nIran\u2019s \u201cphased exit\u201d from the deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Iran accord, one of the \nWest\u2019s biggest foreign policy achievements until U.S. President Donald \nTrump pulled out in May 2018, lifted punishing United Nations\u2019 sanctions\n on Iran in return for Iranian compliance with the deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Iran has\n met its terms but Trump withdrew because he believes the accord did not\n curtail Tehran\u2019s ballistic missile programme or address Iranian \ninvolvement in Syria\u2019s civil war, something Europeans argue the 2015 \ndeal was not designed to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By reimposing punitive sanctions, \nthe United States says it aims to dramatically weaken Iran\u2019s clerical \nrulers and force Tehran to renegotiate a broader arms control deal.The \nEuropean Union says that can still be done without tearing up the \nnuclear accord, which put strict limits on Iranian enrichment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Iranian\n President Hassan Rouhani warned on Wednesday that Tehran could resume \nenrichment at a higher grade if the European powers, China and Russia \ndid not do more to circumvent U.S. sanctions on banking and energy to \nboost trade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The European Union will defend the Iran nuclear accord despite Tehran\u2019s decision to backtrack on its commitments in response to US sanctions, diplomats believe, but European powers expect it to collapse without a deal to sell Iranian oil to China or India. Britain, France and Germany, which signed the 2015 deal along with the United […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60957,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60958,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60956\/revisions\/60958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}