The small steps have started. While they are much better than inaction, they do not guarantee success. In coordination with their European partners, the United States agreed to several gestures with regard to Iran, Thursday, February 18, to re-establish diplomatic contact and give itself a chance to save the nuclear agreement (JCPoA) . Time was running out, as the Islamic Republic was preparing to greatly limit the inspection possibilities of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on its sites, under a law passed in Parliament in December.
For the first time in two years, all the signatories of the JCPoA have publicly expressed, in recent weeks, the same desire: to rehabilitate this agreement signed in 2015. But the deep mistrust that has arisen since the American withdrawal in 2018, then Iran’s serious breaches of its own obligations, has placed what is called “sequencing” at the heart of the concerns. Either the precise choreography of the American and Iranian return as part of the agreement. Nobody, of course, wanting to give the impression of giving in to the pressure of the other.
The exit from this paralysis took place on Thursday, in several movements. In Paris, the foreign ministers of E3 (Germany, France and the United Kingdom) met, before having a videoconference with the American secretary of state, Antony Blinken, for an hour and a half. Iran was the essential subject. This is the second transatlantic discussion in this format, after that of February 5 – it testifies to a new method of consultation. A long press release was published at its end, signed by Jean-Yves Le Drian, the German Heiko Maas, the Briton Dominic Raab and Antony Blinken.
Possible simultaneity
Saluting “The resumption of an in-depth and confident dialogue between the members of E3 and the United States”, the signatories warned Iran against the very unwelcome escalation of limiting IAEA inspections. The statement calls on Tehran to “Take into consideration the consequences of such a serious measure, in particular at this moment of opportunity for a return to diplomacy”.
On the Iranian side, it is estimated that these measures are easily reversible, like the other deviations from the JCPoA decided in recent months, such as the enrichment of uranium at 20% or the production of uranium metal. But European diplomats emphasize that a period without full inspection capacity is like turning off the light in a room, without then having the possibility, in retrospect, of knowing what happened there.
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