WASHINGTON – The European Union on Thursday urged Iran to respect theinternational agreement curbing the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions,and added that the bloc aims to continue trading with the country despiteUS sanctions.

The EU and major European powers — Britain, France and Germany — also saidthat they “note with great concern the statement made by Iran concerningits commitments” to the nuclear deal, stressing that they “reject anyultimatums” coming from Tehran.

The joint statement came as the bloc struggles to preserve the 2015 nucleardeal with Iran, a day after a new deadline from Tehran on finding asolution to make up for last year’s unilateral US withdrawal from theaccord and re-imposed US sanctions on Iran.

“We remain fully committed to the preservation and full implementation” ofthe deal, endorsed by the U.N. Security Council, said the EU statement.

The Trump administration pulled America out of the 2015 deal a year ago,saying it does nothing to stop Iran from developing missiles ordestabilising the Middle East. The Europeans insist that the pact is animportant pillar of regional and global security and was never meant toaddress those other issues.

United States President Donald Trump has tightened the screws further onIran with sanctions on its mining industry after a frustrated Tehran saidit would suspend some promises it made under a nuclear deal rejected byWashington.

On the anniversary of Trump’s withdrawal from the accord he denounced as“horrible”, tensions were soaring as the US deployed an aircraft carrierstrike group and nuclear-capable bombers to the region and accused Iran of“imminent” attacks.

In an announcement previewed for days, Iran said it would immediately stopimplementing some restrictions under the 2015 deal — a move aimed largelyat pressing Washington’s European allies to step up to preserve theagreement.

Tehran said it would abandon even more if the remaining parties to theagreement — Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia — failed to startdelivering on their commitments to sanctions relief within 60 days.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the ultimatum was intended to rescuethe nuclear deal from Trump, whose sanctions have caused severe pain inIran, which had anticipated an economic boon from the agreement negotiatedunder then-president Barack Obama.

“We felt the [deal] needed surgery and that the year-long sedatives havenot delivered any result. This surgery is meant to save the [deal], notdestroy it,” Rouhani said at a cabinet meeting broadcast live on statetelevision.

Rouhani denounced European countries for seeing the US as the world’s“sheriff” and said their view kept them from making “firm decisions fortheir own national interests”.

“Iran must remain in this agreement and we must do everything we can toensure that it stays in,” French President Emmanuel Macron told reportersat an EU summit on Thursday in Romania, where leaders were to discuss thestandoff.

Amid the heated rhetoric from Tehran and Washington, Macron urged theagreement’s signatories not to “get caught up in any escalation” and to“jointly watch over our collective security”.

In their statement, the EU powers said they “regret the re-imposition ofsanctions” by the US and remain “determined to continue pursuing efforts toenable the continuation of legitimate trade with Iran”.

The Europeans have set up a complicated barter-type system to skirt directfinancial transactions with Iran and so evade possible US sanctions. Theworkaround, dubbed INSTEX, is not yet operational as Iran has not completedits part of the scheme.

The bloc said it plans to push ahead with “the operationalization of thespecial purpose vehicle ‘INSTEX’”.

In a message implicitly directed at the US administration, the EU powerssaid “we call on countries not party to the (deal) to refrain from takingany actions that impede the remaining parties’ ability to fully performtheir commitments”.

Cutting Iranian exports

Trump quickly fired back on Wednesday as he moved to inflict greatereconomic pain on Iran, imposing sanctions that would punish anyone who buysor trades the country’s iron, steel, aluminium and copper.

The White House had already acted forcefully to prevent all countries frombuying Iran’s oil — its crucial money-maker — and said that the steel andmining sector was the country’s second-largest source of foreign revenue,accounting for 10 per cent of exports.

“Tehran can expect further actions unless it fundamentally alters itsconduct,” Trump said in a statement.

But in a shift in tone, Trump — who talked tough on North Korea before twolandmark summits with leader Kim Jong Un — said he was willing to negotiateface-to-face.

“I look forward to someday meeting with the leaders of Iran in order towork out an agreement and, very importantly, taking steps to give Iran thefuture it deserves,” he said.

At a rally in Florida late on Wednesday, Trump said he hopes that “a fairdeal” can be worked out at some point.

“We aren’t looking to hurt anybody,” he told supporters. “We just don’twant them to have nuclear weapons. That’s all we want.”

Observers believe it is highly unlikely that Iran’s leaders — who have madehostility to the US a bedrock principle since the 1979 Islamic Revolutiontoppled the pro-Western shah — would want to meet Trump, who has repeatedlythreatened the country.

But Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif regularly saw hiscounterpart in the Obama administration, then secretary of state JohnKerry, and recently dangled the prospect of a prisoner swap with the US.

Moving limits on uranium, heavy water

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said it no longer considereditself bound by the agreed restrictions on stocks of enriched uranium andheavy water.

It said that after 60 days, it would also stop abiding by limits on thelevel to which Iran can enrich uranium and modifications to its Arak heavywater reactor that were designed to prevent the production of plutonium.

Uranium enriched to much higher levels than Iran’s current stocks can beused as the fissile core of a nuclear weapon, while heavy water is a sourceof plutonium, which can be used as an alternative way to produce a warhead.

Robert Kelley, a former United Nations nuclear inspector now with theStockholm International Peace Research Institute, said on a practicallevel, the commitments Iran was dropping had no bearing on its ability todevelop an atomic bomb.

He added that Iran was simply seeking to “save face” after “striking a dealwhich was not respected by the other side”. -APP/AFP