WASHINGTON: Iran’s president declared Wednesday that he would begin to walk away from the restrictions of a 2015 , and the Trump administration responded with a new round of sanctions against Tehran, reviving a crisis that had been contained for the past four years.
The escalation of threats caught the United States’ allies in Europe in the crossfire between Washington and Tehran. And while the announcement by President of Iran did not terminate the landmark nuclear accord that was negotiated by world powers, it put it on life support.
Britain, France and Germany all opposed President ‘s move a year ago to withdraw the United States from the accord that limited Iran’s capacity to produce nuclear fuel for 15 years. Ever since, the Trump administration has ramped up a pressure campaign against Iran’s clerical leaders, including blocking global oil exports and expediting battleships and fighter jets to the Persian Gulf this week to face down what officials described, without evidence, as a new threat by Tehran against US troops in the Middle East.
European officials had promised to set up a bartering system to evade imposed against . But that effort has largely failed, even as Iran complied with its obligations under the agreement, from production limits to inspections.
On Wednesday morning in Tehran, Rouhani declared he had run out of patience.
“The path we have chosen today is not the path of war, it is the path of diplomacy,” he said in a nationally broadcast speech. “But diplomacy with a new language and a new logic.”
Rather than exit the deal entirely, Rouhani announced a series of small steps to resume the production of nuclear centrifuges and to begin accumulating nuclear material.
Rouhani also set a series of carefully calibrated deadlines for European leaders – essentially forcing them to either join the United States in isolating Iran or uphold the nuclear deal that world powers spent years negotiating with Tehran.
Hours later, the announced that it was taking additional measures to squeeze Iran’s economy by imposing sanctions on its steel, aluminum, iron and copper sectors. Iran’s industrial metals industries account for about 10% of its exports, according to a Trump administration estimate.
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