Diplomatic Efforts Multiply to Ease Tangled Frictions With Iran
By Zoya Khan and Golnar Motevalli
A diplomatic flurry is underway to try to defuse layers of international tensions centering on Iran and its increasingly tangled showdown with the West.
European efforts to salvage the multipower nuclear deal with Iran from months of brinkmanship between Washington and Tehran have grown more complicated with the seizure of a U.K. oil tanker, and officials are crisscrossing the skies t keep seething frictions from worsening.
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has traveled to France to meet with President Emmanuel Macron. Oman’s foreign minister will head for Tehran on Saturday as tensions soar in the oil chokepoint it shares with Iran. The prime minister of Iraq, whose country has security ties with the U.S. and political and religious links to Iran, has been in Tehran since Monday.
Araghchi intends to pass on a letter from President Hassan Rouhani to Macron that will address France’s advice to suspend nuclear activities Iran recently resumed, in an effort to ease the standoff with Washington, a Foreign Ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss its contents.
Salvaging Efforts
Macron, along with German and U.K. leaders, has been at the forefront of European Union efforts to keep the nuclear deal from from collapsing after President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out last year.
The European powers have developed a financial channel meant to let European companies trade with Iran without using dollars or U.S. banks, or moving money across the border. But Iran has been disappointed by the tool because it won’t process oil sales, its economic lifeline. Earlier this month, in an effort to pressure the Europeans to do more to take on Washington, it abandoned the nuclear deal’s limitations on uranium enrichment, a potentially vital component of bombmaking. Iran says it has no interest in pursuing nuclear weapons.
Regional frictions shot up in May after the Trump administration imposed new sanctions on the crippled Iranian economy in an effort to force Tehran to negotiate a new nuclear deal that would address areas of concern to the U.S. beyond Iran’s atomic program. Iran, refusing to be cowed by Washington’s so-called campaign of “maximum pressure” against it, has intensified its nuclear activities.
Tankers Seized
A back-to-back seizure of oil tankers has made European efforts to keep the accord alive all the more difficult. The U.K., while working to defuse the nuclear crisis as a member of the EU, has become embroiled in a diplomatic feud with Tehran after seizing an Iranian oil tanker in Gibraltar earlier this month, saying it carried contraband cargo. Iran retaliated by holding a British tanker on Friday near the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 40% of the world’s seaborne oil travels.
On Monday, U.K. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Britain didn’t want to escalate tensions with Iran and won’t take part in Washington’s “maximum pressure” policy. But he called on Iran to release the tanker and announced that European governments will assemble a naval mission to provide safe passage for ships through the Gulf. The U.S. has also called for a military coalition to protect vessels in the area.
“There is no need to form a coalition to protect the region,” Iranian Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri said on Tuesday, according to state-run Tasnim news agency. “The enemies should enter talks without coercing Iran and they will then see that calm can be restored for all in the region.”
Amid the turbulence, Iran announced in a show of force Monday that it has handed down death sentences to several nationals accused of being part of a CIA-trained spy network. Trump dismissed the allegations as “totally false.”
Photo: YJC
