The High Representative of the European Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, is traveling to Tehran to discuss the situation in the Middle East with Iranian leaders. The EU foreign minister aims to try to āde-escalateā rising tensions.
Borrell will meet, among others, President Hassan Rouhani and his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif. Borrell specifically wants to save the 2015 nuclear deal that is meant to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Iran threatens to suspend cooperation with the EU if Brussels does not conclude a āfair dealā with Tehran.
At the time, Iran concluded the nuclear agreement which provided for the lifting of international sanctions against Iran in exchange for the pledge that Iran would not develop its own nuclear weapons. The deal has been deteriorating since U.S. President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from that treaty in 2018.
Washington then re-imposed economic sanctions on the country and also demands that EU countries join these sanctions. The European Union has not done so yet. Since then, tensions between the U.S. and Iran have risen again. Earlier this year, they reached a peak when the Americans killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in Iraq.
The Iranian government then declared that it no longer feels bound by the restrictions imposed by the nuclear agreement, much to the dismay of EU countries. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom subsequently activated a complaint mechanism against Iran that could lead to new sanctions being imposed by the EU.
The European diplomatic service emphasized on Sunday that EU Commissioner Borrell has been given āa strong mandate from the European foreign ministersā to enter into dialogue with Iran.