Iran will hold nuclear talks with Britain, France and Germany on Friday in Istanbul, a spokesperson for Tehran’s Foreign Ministry announced early on Monday.
“The meeting between Iran, Britain, France and Germany will take place at the deputy foreign minister level,” Iranian state media quoted ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei as saying.
The statement came after foreign ministers of the E3 nations spoke with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi for the first time since last month’s 12-day war between Israel and the Islamic Republic, which saw Jerusalem and the United States attack the country’s nuclear facilities.
Araghchi in the phone call on Thursday night told his counterparts that “any new round of talks is only possible when the other side is ready for a fair, balanced, and mutually beneficial nuclear deal,” he wrote on X.
He added: “If E.U./E3 want to have a role, they should act responsibly, and put aside the worn-out policies of threat and pressure, including the ‘snap-back’ for which they lack absolutely no moral and legal ground.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the E3 foreign ministers agreed in a phone call on July 14 that they would give Tehran until the end of August to reach a new nuclear deal, Israel’s Channel 12 News channel reported last week, citing three sources with knowledge of the matter.
The report came a day after French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot told Reuters that Paris, Berlin and London would activate the snapback mechanism by the end of August if no concrete progress has been made.
Snapback sanctions would allow the United Nations to quickly reinstate penalties on Iran for violations of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal, which the United States pulled out of in 2018, but to which the E3 nations remain a party alongside Iran, China, Russia and the European Union.
However, Araghchi argued on Sunday that London, Paris and Berlin “relinquished their role as ‘Participants’ in the JCPOA” nuclear deal, rendering any attempt to snapback sanctions on Iran “null and void.”
Araghchi announced on X that he sent a letter to U.N. Secretary General António Guterres outlining how the E3 “reneged on their commitments and actively contributed to the so-called U.S. ‘maximum pressure’ policy, and recently, the military aggression against our people too.
“The E3 cannot and should not be allowed to undermine the credibility of the U.N. Security Council by abusing a Resolution to which they themselves have not been committed,” Iran’s top diplomat stated.
A trilateral meeting between Iran, Russia and China is set to be held on Tuesday to discuss Tehran’s nuclear program and the sanctions threat, Reuters cited the Iranian Foreign Ministry as announcing on Monday.
Reimposition of U.N. sanctions will trigger an “appropriate and proportionate response,” the Iranian regime warned last week.
“The threat to use the snapback mechanism lacks legal and political basis and will be met with an appropriate and proportionate response from the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Baghaei told reporters, per Reuters.
Meanwhile, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei warned on July 16 that Tehran is “ready” to respond to any renewed military action against it and has capabilities to deal “even bigger blows” to the United States and others.
The Islamic Republic “not only does not fear America—it instills fear in it,” Khamenei declared, speaking to the country’s judiciary officials in his second public appearance since the June 13-24 war with Israel.
“Although we consider the Zionist regime [Israel] a cancer and the U.S. a criminal due to its support of that regime, we did not seek war,” he said. “Yet whenever the enemy attacked, our response was forceful and firm.”
Israel was “brought to its knees” by Iran and “desperately turned to the U.S.” to strike the regime’s key nuclear facilities on June 22, Khamenei claimed, adding that Jerusalem “realized it cannot handle” Tehran.
At the Knesset on Monday, opposition leader Yair Lapid warned that while diplomacy was important, any new agreement with Iran must meet strict conditions.
“There are three levels of discussion,” he told JNS. “The best level is a good agreement"—one in which Iran is fully prevented from enriching uranium and all centrifuges are dismantled under international supervision.
Lapid stressed that without such guarantees, a weak or incomplete deal could be “the worst of all worlds.”
In that case, he said, the international community—particularly Britain, France and Germany—should return to a policy of “maximum sanctions.”
He also urged the E3 to keep pressure on Tehran by making it “clear to the Iranians that the snapback [sanction mechanism] is not off the table, and they’re going to use it even if it was postponed.”
