EU work to save nuclear agreement with Iran

The 2015 agreement is “not in the best of health, but it’s still alive,” outgoing EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told reporters in Brussels yesterday.

She said efforts to “hold the pieces together” were better than letting the deal fail because “not having it in place is a terrible option for everybody.”

The meeting of the EU's 28 foreign ministers yesterday discussed possible ways to help reduce tensions between Iran and the United States and convince Iran to remain committed to the nuclear deal despite the U.S. pullout and the reimposition of U.S. sanctions.

The EU foreign ministers insisted that recent Iranian actions surpassing uranium enrichment thresholds set by the 2015 deal did not necessarily condemn the whole agreement.

“We note that technically all the steps that have been taken — and that we regret have been taken — are reversible. So we hope and we invite Iran to reverse the steps,” said outgoing EU top diplomat Federica Mogherini.

“The deviations are not significant enough to think that Iran has definitively broken the agreement,” said Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell, who is in line to succeed Mogherini this fall, according to the Associated Press. 

During the meeting, the bloc's foreign ministers were also expected to seek to drum up further support for the EU's barter-type system to trade with Tehran and get around possible U.S. sanctions.