EU3 Legally Incompetent to Invoke Snapback: Iranian Deputy FM

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Kazem Gharibabadi said in a televised interview on Wednesday night that Tehran had held extensive talks with the three European states –the UK, France and Germany- and the representative of the European Union a day earlier.

“Our focus was specifically on the issue of the UN Security Council Resolution 2231. We discussed in detail the European approach toward this resolution,” he explained.

The deputy foreign minister stressed, “We made it very clear for the Europeans from a legal perspective that they are legally not in a position to invoke the snapback mechanism. There is no legal basis for such an action, and we elaborated on these grounds for them.”

He went on to say that while the Europeans hold a different view, the undeniable fact is that “they have not been implementing the JCPOA for the past seven years.”

Gharibabadi said Iran’s data show that not only have the Europeans failed to implement the JCPOA over the past seven years, but they have even imposed additional sanctions against Iran, including in the maritime sector.

The snapback mechanism, embedded in UN Security Council Resolution 2231 that endorsed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), allows participants in the nuclear agreement to restore the UN sanctions against Iran in case of what they claim to be “significant non-performance” by Tehran.

Iran insists that the United States, which unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018, forfeited its right to trigger the mechanism, while the European trio have also lost standing after years of failing to honor their own commitments under the accord.

Tehran has repeatedly argued that the invocation of snapback by parties that are themselves in breach of the JCPOA lacks any legal foundation and would constitute a grave violation of international law.