March, 2018
France urges
tough EU approach on Iran to save nuclear accord
Robin Emmott
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - France urged the European Union on Monday to
consider new sanctions on Iran over its involvement in Syria’s civil war and
its ballistic missile program, as Paris tries to persuade Washington to
preserve a 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran.
FILE PHOTO: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani shakes hands with French
Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, in Tehran, Iran, March 5, 2018.
President.ir/Handout via REUTERS
U.S. President Donald Trump has given the European signatories a May
12 deadline to “fix the terrible flaws” of the deal, which was agreed under his
predecessor Barack Obama, or he will refuse to extend U.S. sanctions relief on
Iran.
In response, the three European signatories - France, Britain and
Germany - have proposed new EU sanctions targeting Iranians who support Syria’s
government in that country’s civil war and Tehran’s ballistic missile program,
according to a confidential document seen by Reuters.
“We are determined to ensure that the Vienna accord is respected,”
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters on arrival for talks
with his EU counterparts, referring to the city where the 2015 deal was signed.
“But we must not exclude (from consideration) Iran’s responsibility in
the proliferation of ballistic missiles and in its very questionable role in
the near- and Middle East,” he said. “That must also be discussed to reach a
common position.”
The confidential document cites “transfers of Iranian missiles and
missile technology” to Syria and allies of Tehran, such as Houthi rebels in
Yemen and Lebanon’s Shi’ite Hezbollah.
SANCTIONS
Any EU-wide measures would be the first significant punitive steps
since the bloc lifted broad economic sanctions on Iran last year following the
2015 accord to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions for at least a decade.
But new sanctions would need the support of all 28 EU member states.
Some of them are keen to rebuild a business relationship that once made the EU
Iran’s top trading partner and its second-biggest oil customer.
“We have to explore all the possible measures to have the same type of
pressure as we had in the nuclear dossier,” Belgium’s Foreign Minister Didier
Reynders told reporters.
“We have to examine all the possibilities that we have to put pressure
on Iran in these areas,” he said.
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, who chaired the final
stages of the nuclear negotiations between Iran and Britain, China, France,
Germany, Russia and the United States, stressed that there was no formal EU
position on new sanctions.
“We’ll discuss ways in which we can keep the full implementation of
the nuclear deal with Iran,” Mogherini said of the EU strategy so far. “There’s
no (EU) proposal of additional sanctions against Iran.”
Additional reporting by Samantha Koester, Alissa de Carbonnel; Editing
by Gareth Jones
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