Will European countries punish the Islamic Republic for its decision to suspend cooperation with United Nations nuclear inspectors? For now, talk of re-imposing global sanctions on the Iranian regime is hushed at best. 

President Pezeshkian of Iran on Wednesday signed into law a parliamentary bill to suspend all cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Vienna-based inspectors for now remain on Iranian soil, but the new law is sure to complicate future inspections, including the search for the whereabouts of some 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium that might have survived American and Israeli bombings. 

Israel is calling on three European countries, Britain, France, and Germany — known as the E-3 — to enact the UN Security Council’s “snapback” mechanism regarding Iran sanctions. A clause in the 2015 council resolution that endorsed that year’s Iran nuclear deal allows each of the deal parties to automatically reimpose all global sanctions on the Islamic Republic.  

For now, though, “there’s murmur about snapback, but nothing more than that,” a UN-based diplomat tells the Sun. He noted that time is limited for enacting the mechanism. 

America, Britain, France, Germany, Communist China, and Russia can unilaterally trigger the option, and no veto could block the snapback. Council members, however, rejected an American attempt to snap back the sanctions after President Trump left the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018. The E-3, though, might still enact it. 

The Iranian parliament’s legislation to suspend ties with the IAEA cites the 12-day Israeli and American strikes against its nuclear facilities. The foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, accused the Vienna-based agency’s director, Rafael Grossi, of “malign intent.” Tehran officials declared the director persona non grata after an IAEA report determined the regime is in violation of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. 

“Iran joined the NPT in the Shah era,” a Jerusalem-based veteran Farsi-language broadcaster, Menashe Amir, tells the Sun. The mullah regime, he says, has been ambivalent about the treaty from the very start. “They’ve been talking about it for years,” he adds. “They really want to leave the NPT, but at the same time they fear the consequences, including further sanctions and kinetic attacks.”

As a result, Mr. Amir says, the regime is “playing games. They suspend cooperation, but don’t formally leave the NPT. In reality, they have long violated all their treaty obligations, even as they count on the Europeans, and even the Americans, to react mildly, if at all.”

Following the damning IAEA report in May, the agency’s board of governors condemned Iran’s violations. Suspending ties with the IAEA inspectors sends a “disastrous signal,” a German foreign ministry spokesman, Martin Giese, told reporters Wednesday. “For a diplomatic solution, it is essential for Iran to work with the IAEA.” 

The IAEA board’s May condemnation can serve as ample legal justification for Germany, in coordination with France and Britain, enacting a snapback resolution at the UN Security Council. The 2015 council resolution included several “sunset” clauses, phasing out global sanctions on the Islamic Republic if it were to verifiably end its nuclear arms pursuit.

One of the “sunset” clauses specified that the ability to vacate the JCPOA, known as the snapback option, would expire 10 years after the resolution was enacted, which comes due in October. After that date, none of the deal’s parties will be able to unilaterally reimpose all sanctions.

“The time to activate the Snapback mechanism is now,” Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Saar, writes on X, appealing to the E-3 to enact the motion. “Iran has just issued a scandalous announcement about suspending its cooperation with the IAEA,” he adds, in a “complete renunciation of all its international nuclear obligations and commitments.”

Following Israeli and American bombings of Iranian facilities at Fordow, Natanz, Isfahan, and other sites connected with the nuclear and ballistic missile programs, several observers raised the alarm about the whereabouts of 900 pounds, or 407 kilograms, of uranium enriched to near-bomb-level purity of 60 percent.

IAEA inspectors would be best suited to find out whether the enriched uranium was lost, moved away before the bombings, or is buried at the destroyed sites. Inspectors would “have to get an explanation from Iran,” a former IAEA deputy director, Olli Heinonen, told the Sun last week. “Is it all there? And if something is missing, why is it missing?”

For now, the IAEA is “awaiting further official information from Iran,” it said in a statement on Wednesday. In reaction to Tehran’s  announcement of the inspections suspension, will Europeans now join Israel and America in pressuring the mullahs to end their nuclear threat once and for all?