EU working to save unraveling Iran nuke deal

BRUSSELS >> European Union nations threw their diplomatic weight behind the unraveling Iran nuclear deal on Monday, trying to rescue the pact from collapsing under U.S. pressure.

The 28 EU foreign ministers insisted that recent Iranian actions surpassing uranium enrichment thresholds set by the 2015 deal did not necessarily condemn the whole agreement.

“We note that technically all the steps that have been taken — and that we regret have been taken — are reversible. So we hope and we invite Iran to reverse the steps,” said EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.

“The deviations are not significant enough to think that Iran has definitively broken the agreement,” said Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell, who is in line to succeed Mogherini this fall.

The EU currently has few direct measures for offsetting U.S. economic sanctions against Tehran that have crippled the country’s economy, and the bloc faces U.S. threats to target any EU companies that attempt to trade with Iran.

Noting that Iran was “still a good year away” from potentially developing a nuclear bomb, British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said there was still a “small window to keep the deal alive.”

Even if Britain, France, Germany and the rest of the EU held out a helping hand to Iran, the diplomatic puzzle was made more difficult Monday when France’s foreign ministry said a researcher with dual French-Iranian nationality had been arrested in Iran.

It said the French government was seeking information about Fariba Adelkhah and consular access to her “without delay” but added there has been “no satisfactory response to its demands as of today.”

Iranian opposition websites based abroad have said Abdelkhah disappeared in June.

And while the EU nations were looking to deescalate tensions in the Persian Gulf region, they also put the blame on the Trump administration for quitting the deal last year, imposing sanctions and trying to keep European nations from trading with Iran.