Russia, China, reject attempt of E3 to Reimpose Sanctions on Iran over Nuclear Program
Juan Cole 08/29/2025
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – France, the United Kingdom and Germany (the “E3”) on Thursday sent a formal letter to the UN Security Council asking for snap backsanctions on Iran over its nuclear enrichment activities, which they maintain breach the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or nuclear deal.
The joint letter of the three governments complains that “the E3 believe Iran to be in significant non-performance of its commitments under the JCPoA.” They add that Iran’s breach “includes the accumulation of a high enriched uranium stockpile which lacks any credible civilian justification and is unprecedented for a state without a nuclear weapons programme.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described the actions of the three European countries in this regard as “unjustified, illegal and lacking in any legal basis.”
The Foreign Ministry in Tehran issued a statement saying that it rejected this step in the strongest possible terms and added “This unjustified action, which is contrary to the dispute resolution mechanism in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is an illegal and unjustified attempt to restore the revoked [pre-2015 sanctions] resolutions and is clearly inconsistent with [UNSC] Resolution 2231 (2015).”
China opposes this step, with its spokesman saying, “China stays committed to peacefully resolving the Iranian nuclear issue through political and diplomatic means, opposes invoking Security Council ‘snapback’ sanctions and believes that it does not help parties build trust and bridge differences and is not conducive to the diplomatic effort for the early resumption of talks.”
Britain, France and Germany ignore that Iran was promised the complete lifting of economic sanctions in 2015 in return for mothballing 80% of its civilian nuclear enrichment program, but that it never got significant sanctions relief. The US Republican Party refused to let President Barack Obama lift US sanctions on Iran overseen by the Office of Foreign Assent Control (OFAC) in the Treasury Department. Since OFAC’s are third-party sanctions, they threatened anyone who invested in or traded with Iran. France’s TotalEnergies was prevented from developing Iranian gas. Renault was prevented from establishing an auto factory in Iran.
Europe, looking out for number one, never figured out a way of lifting economic sanctions on Iran, and, as Russia pointed out, they are themselves in breach of the 2015 treaty and so have no grounds to complain about noncompliance. The Russian foreign minister says that his country has no intention of complying with any restored economic sanctions on Iran, as a result.
So Iran got nothing from the deal. Then in May 2018, Trump tore up the deal entirely and imposed on Iran the most severe economic sanctions ever applied by one country to another in peace time. Trump did this even though from 2015-2018 Iran had been in perfect compliance with the JCPOA. The US “maximum pressure” sanctions amounted to an economic blockade of the country and even aimed at stopping ordinary commerce like oil sales.
Iran in the end was worse off for having signed the deal than it ever was before. It was actually punished for good behavior.
The Iranians abided by the nuclear deal for a year after Trump destroyed it, but then they started acting out.
The E3 appear to be demanding that Iran destroy or send out of the country its stock of uranium enriched to 60%, of which it has about 900 pounds. You only need enrichment to about 3.5% to make fuel for nuclear reactors, such as the one at Bushehr. There actually is no use at all for uranium enriched to 60% — it is just radioactive rocks. But if you kept feeding it through the centrifuges you could eventually get it to the 95% needed for a bomb. And obviously, it would be easier and faster to get to 95% from 60% than to get there from 3.5%. Moreover, the more centrifuges you have, the faster you can enrich. Iran was limited to only 6,000 centrifuges by the treaty, but the three accusers say there is reason to think it has more. (Or had before Trump bombed Fordow.)
These Western European countries also complain that Iran isn’t allowing inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, as it had pledged to.
The three countries appear to be saying that if Iran accepts these demands, they won’t go through with the snap back.
The timing of this move is difficult to grasp, given that Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program, which has never been shown to have a military dimension, is non-existent after its installations were bombed in June by Israel and the United States.
One possibility is that the Western European powers are convinced that Iran could fairly easily start the enrichment back up, and that Tehran may be vindictive about having been bombed and go for broke for a bomb. While this expectation is not unreasonable, it is evidence-free and disregards Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s numerous fatwas or legal rulings forbidding the making, stockpiling or use of nuclear weapons since they cause mass civilian casualties.
One impetus for this move is that all UN sanctions on Iran of the sort imposed 2007-2015 were set to expire in October. Given that the world is now polarized over Iran’s enrichment program, if the sanctions did expire, they could likely never be reimposed by the UNSC because China and Russia would veto that move.
Russia and China, who oppose this move by London, Paris and Berlin, cannot veto the snap back, however. According to BBC Monitoring , para. 11 of UNSC Resolution 2231, which authorized the 2015 nuclear deal, provides that any signatory that doubts the compliance of any party (i.e. Iran) to the JCPOA is permitted to bring a complaint to the UN Security Council. In that case, the pre-2015 UN sanctions on Iran would be reimplemented within 30 days.
Any signatory to the nuclear deal is allowed to present a resolution asking that economic sanctions on Iran continue to be lifted. But that resolution can only succeed if it gets the support of at least 9 members. Even then, it can be vetoed by one of the 5 permanent members of the Security Council.
Russia appears to be preparing such a letter for the extension of the suspension of Iran sanctions, and the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tehran was looking at it.
If the three European countries do go forward with the snap back, however, then Iran will go back to being sanctioned by the UNSC. Because Iran does not have 9 votes against renewed sanctions on the current Security Council, and the US will certainly veto any counter-resolution. I figure China, Russia, Algeria, Somalia, Slovenia, and maybe Pakistan (not sure) might vote against new sanctions on Iran. That is 6, not 9. On the other hand, the US, the UK, France, Denmark, Greece, Guyana, Panama, South Korea, and Sierra Leone would probably vote against Iran, some of them because they fear Trump.
Russia is already saying that the snap back is meaningless and that Moscow won’t comply with it, and China seems to be taking the same position. Thus, countries accounting for nearly a quarter of global GDP by PPP measures would not participate in new Iran sanctions, right off the bat. I figure Iran-India trade at about $2.4 billion a year and I doubt that will change, either.
Iranians are saying that the Trump maximum pressure sanctions (which Biden kept in place for the most part) are already so severe that the old UNSC sanctions from before 2015 are tame in comparison and unlikely to make much difference.
The one place where new sanctions could hurt is in making the Iranian currency even less valuable, and there was some sign of that effect in Thursday’s global currency markets.