“It is hard to imagine another actor that could have done this,” then European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said to the UN Security Council eight years ago as the body unanimously approved Resolution 2231, enshrining the Iran nuclear deal.
Mogherini was referring to the role played by the EU as a facilitator and mediator of the negotiations that culminated in July 2015 in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the multilateral agreement that limited Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Mogherini’s message to the Security Council had a certain self-congratulatory tone, but there is no denying that the EU’s assertiveness as an early interlocutor with Iran on the nuclear issue and later coordinator of the JCPOA was instrumental in reaching an agreement. Particularly important was the European role as a bridge between the United States and Iran, which have not had diplomatic relations since 1980.
Fast forward to the present, and instead of EU mediation, it is the Biden administration that has been conducting indirect talks with Iran in an effort to reach what Iranian officials have described as a “political cease-fire.’’ An understanding between Washington and Tehran would reportedly include a halt in Iran’s nuclear enrichment, the liberation of several dual nationals imprisoned in Iran, and the end of the attacks by Iran-affiliated groups on U.S. troops stationed in Syria. In return, Iran would see the unfreezing of some of its assets abroad, including $7 billion in oil revenues held in South Korea.
It would be unfair to say that the EU is nowhere to be seen in these recent developments, but it is clearly playing a very secondary role. The EU mediator for the JCPOA, Enrique Mora, traveled to Doha, Qatar on June 21, 2023 to meet Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani but the meeting received limited media attention because observers are aware that Iran and the U.S. prefer to bypass the EU in their dealings. The most recent indirect talks were held in Oman and the U.S. side was represented by Brett McGurk, a Deputy Assistant to the President and White House Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa. The venue does not come as a surprise considering that the Sultanate hosted negotiations a decade ago in the run-up to the JCPOA and has long served as a go-between for the U.S. and Iran. The difference is that in those days, the backchannel Oman talks ran in parallel with publicly acknowledged multilateral conversations led by then-EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
There are several reasons for the EU’s current marginal role. In the eyes of Iran, the EU has a serious credibility problem. After then-President Donald Trump unilaterally abandoned the JCPOA in May 2018, Mogherini announced that the EU would work to ensure the “full and effective implementation” of the deal as long as Iran continued to comply with it. Tehran did so for one year.
However, the Trump administration not only re-imposed U.S. sanctions on Iran but sought to restrict other countries’ trade through secondary sanctions.
France, Germany, and Britain established in January 2019 the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX) to protect European companies trading with Iran from the negative consequences in the U.S. market. But it was clear from the start that INSTEX had major limitations. It could only facilitate trade in humanitarian goods due to traders’ reluctance to import products such as Iranian oil that the Trump administration had explicitly targeted. It took a year before INSTEX carried out its first and only transaction — a shipment of German medical supplies. INSTEX was finally liquidated in March 2023. Nasser Kanaani, the spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, summed up Iran’s view when he recently stated that the collapse of INSTEX proved “European governments failed to honor their undertakings” under the JCPOA.
The EU was unable to match its political ambition to preserve the JCPOA with the financial muscle and economic independence required. Iran’s progressive departure after May 2019 from the uranium enrichment limits imposed under the JCPOA also helped the EU to justify its failure to uphold its side of the deal. Even so, the EU continued to reiterate its commitment to “saving the Iran nuclear deal,” as the current EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell did on the fifth anniversary of the JCPOA’s implementation.
Borrell and his negotiating team engaged in shuttle diplomacy between Washington and Tehran after talks to revive the JCPOA started in Vienna in April 2021. A return to the JCPOA appeared close by March 2022, but the talks lapsed amid mutual recriminations and new complications caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Renewed hopes were dashed in July 2022. By then, Borrell had made clear that the EU had done everything it could by presenting to the U.S. and Iran a formal text addressing “the sanctions lifting as well as the nuclear steps needed to restore the JCPOA.” The U.S. was amenable, but Iran raised new conditions, seeking guarantees that a future U.S. administration would not pull out again — something not possible under the U.S. system. Iran also sought to tie a deal to the end of a probe into unexplained traces of uranium.
Meanwhile, the harsh repression of protests that followed the death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022 in the custody of the so-called morality police, together with revelations that Iran had been sending Russia drones to use in its war against Ukraine, further complicated the optics of further EU engagement.
This, however, is not the full story. The U.S. and Iran have largely been at odds since Iran held U.S. diplomats hostage after the 1979 revolution. However, the recent indirect negotiations show a common interest in preventing a serious new crisis. The Biden administration, which is entering a re-election campaign, does not want a confrontation but also does not want to lift all the sanctions imposed by Trump on Iran as part of his “maximum pressure campaign.” Meanwhile, Iran has accumulated a large stockpile of uranium enriched up to 60 percent and has no intention of going back to the 3.67 percent limit mandated by the JCPOA. The EU, however, continues to favor reviving the JCPOA as it was originally conceived.
There has been no official EU reaction to the news that the U.S. and Iran have been conducting indirect negotiations in Oman. Nevertheless, one of Mora’s comments on Twitter after he met with Kani in Doha is quite revealing. When a Twitter user pointed out that the EU diplomat had a copy of the JCPOA on the table while talking to his Iranian counterpart, Mora replied that this is because the JCPOA is “the best possible, if not the only, framework to address the legitimate non-proliferation concerns of the international community on the Iranian nuclear program.”
Increasingly, the EU seems to be speaking a different language than Washington and Tehran. The JCPOA was the result of twelve years of painstaking diplomacy in which Europe was closely involved. The JCPOA remains preferable to the alternatives discussed over the years including the limited understanding the U.S. and Iran are seeking. Continuing to hold to the JCPOA, however, makes little sense for the EU if this entails becoming completely irrelevant to determining the outcome of the Iran nuclear file.
Marc Martorell Junyent holds an MA in Comparative and Middle East Politics and Society from Tübingen University. He is a writer and researcher whose work has appeared in Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), Responsible Statecraft, The New Arab, Mondoweiss and other publications.
Is the EU Condemning Itself to Irrelevance on the Iran Nuclear File?
By Marc Martorell Junyent
Middle East & North Africa
“It is hard to imagine another actor that could have done this,” then European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said to the UN Security Council eight years ago as the body unanimously approved Resolution 2231, enshrining the Iran nuclear deal.
Mogherini was referring to the role played by the EU as a facilitator and mediator of the negotiations that culminated in July 2015 in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the multilateral agreement that limited Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Mogherini’s message to the Security Council had a certain self-congratulatory tone, but there is no denying that the EU’s assertiveness as an early interlocutor with Iran on the nuclear issue and later coordinator of the JCPOA was instrumental in reaching an agreement. Particularly important was the European role as a bridge between the United States and Iran, which have not had diplomatic relations since 1980.
Fast forward to the present, and instead of EU mediation, it is the Biden administration that has been conducting indirect talks with Iran in an effort to reach what Iranian officials have described as a “political cease-fire.’’ An understanding between Washington and Tehran would reportedly include a halt in Iran’s nuclear enrichment, the liberation of several dual nationals imprisoned in Iran, and the end of the attacks by Iran-affiliated groups on U.S. troops stationed in Syria. In return, Iran would see the unfreezing of some of its assets abroad, including $7 billion in oil revenues held in South Korea.
It would be unfair to say that the EU is nowhere to be seen in these recent developments, but it is clearly playing a very secondary role. The EU mediator for the JCPOA, Enrique Mora, traveled to Doha, Qatar on June 21, 2023 to meet Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani but the meeting received limited media attention because observers are aware that Iran and the U.S. prefer to bypass the EU in their dealings. The most recent indirect talks were held in Oman and the U.S. side was represented by Brett McGurk, a Deputy Assistant to the President and White House Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa. The venue does not come as a surprise considering that the Sultanate hosted negotiations a decade ago in the run-up to the JCPOA and has long served as a go-between for the U.S. and Iran. The difference is that in those days, the backchannel Oman talks ran in parallel with publicly acknowledged multilateral conversations led by then-EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
There are several reasons for the EU’s current marginal role. In the eyes of Iran, the EU has a serious credibility problem. After then-President Donald Trump unilaterally abandoned the JCPOA in May 2018, Mogherini announced that the EU would work to ensure the “full and effective implementation” of the deal as long as Iran continued to comply with it. Tehran did so for one year.
However, the Trump administration not only re-imposed U.S. sanctions on Iran but sought to restrict other countries’ trade through secondary sanctions.
France, Germany, and Britain established in January 2019 the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX) to protect European companies trading with Iran from the negative consequences in the U.S. market. But it was clear from the start that INSTEX had major limitations. It could only facilitate trade in humanitarian goods due to traders’ reluctance to import products such as Iranian oil that the Trump administration had explicitly targeted. It took a year before INSTEX carried out its first and only transaction — a shipment of German medical supplies. INSTEX was finally liquidated in March 2023. Nasser Kanaani, the spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, summed up Iran’s view when he recently stated that the collapse of INSTEX proved “European governments failed to honor their undertakings” under the JCPOA.
The EU was unable to match its political ambition to preserve the JCPOA with the financial muscle and economic independence required. Iran’s progressive departure after May 2019 from the uranium enrichment limits imposed under the JCPOA also helped the EU to justify its failure to uphold its side of the deal. Even so, the EU continued to reiterate its commitment to “saving the Iran nuclear deal,” as the current EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell did on the fifth anniversary of the JCPOA’s implementation.
Borrell and his negotiating team engaged in shuttle diplomacy between Washington and Tehran after talks to revive the JCPOA started in Vienna in April 2021. A return to the JCPOA appeared close by March 2022, but the talks lapsed amid mutual recriminations and new complications caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Renewed hopes were dashed in July 2022. By then, Borrell had made clear that the EU had done everything it could by presenting to the U.S. and Iran a formal text addressing “the sanctions lifting as well as the nuclear steps needed to restore the JCPOA.” The U.S. was amenable, but Iran raised new conditions, seeking guarantees that a future U.S. administration would not pull out again — something not possible under the U.S. system. Iran also sought to tie a deal to the end of a probe into unexplained traces of uranium.
Meanwhile, the harsh repression of protests that followed the death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022 in the custody of the so-called morality police, together with revelations that Iran had been sending Russia drones to use in its war against Ukraine, further complicated the optics of further EU engagement.
This, however, is not the full story. The U.S. and Iran have largely been at odds since Iran held U.S. diplomats hostage after the 1979 revolution. However, the recent indirect negotiations show a common interest in preventing a serious new crisis. The Biden administration, which is entering a re-election campaign, does not want a confrontation but also does not want to lift all the sanctions imposed by Trump on Iran as part of his “maximum pressure campaign.” Meanwhile, Iran has accumulated a large stockpile of uranium enriched up to 60 percent and has no intention of going back to the 3.67 percent limit mandated by the JCPOA. The EU, however, continues to favor reviving the JCPOA as it was originally conceived.
There has been no official EU reaction to the news that the U.S. and Iran have been conducting indirect negotiations in Oman. Nevertheless, one of Mora’s comments on Twitter after he met with Kani in Doha is quite revealing. When a Twitter user pointed out that the EU diplomat had a copy of the JCPOA on the table while talking to his Iranian counterpart, Mora replied that this is because the JCPOA is “the best possible, if not the only, framework to address the legitimate non-proliferation concerns of the international community on the Iranian nuclear program.”
Increasingly, the EU seems to be speaking a different language than Washington and Tehran. The JCPOA was the result of twelve years of painstaking diplomacy in which Europe was closely involved. The JCPOA remains preferable to the alternatives discussed over the years including the limited understanding the U.S. and Iran are seeking. Continuing to hold to the JCPOA, however, makes little sense for the EU if this entails becoming completely irrelevant to determining the outcome of the Iran nuclear file.
Marc Martorell Junyent holds an MA in Comparative and Middle East Politics and Society from Tübingen University. He is a writer and researcher whose work has appeared in Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), Responsible Statecraft, The New Arab, Mondoweiss and other publications.
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