Europe opposes .. Will Washington succeed in reactivating sanctions against Iran?

Robbins affirmed - in an interview with the episode (9/19/2020) of the "Beyond the News" program - that Article 37 of the nuclear agreement allows Washington to reactivate these sanctions, noting that the issue of sanctions is linked to the United Nations.

While Washington seeks to re-activate international sanctions on Tehran, the answer comes to it with a letter from Paris, London and Berlin to the Security Council, confirming that Iran's exemption from those sanctions will continue after Sunday, the date the United States struck to implement that desire.

An argument that divides the importance between Sunday and Monday, in the first to know the fate of the US efforts, and in the second to determine its options vis-à-vis Iran, which it stressed that it would respond to any aggression targeting its territory.

On the other hand, the editor of the German newspaper "Hindsblatt", Matthias Bruegmann, said that the United States does not have the right to re-activate the sanctions on Iran, because it withdrew from the nuclear deal unilaterally, at a time when Europe wants this agreement to continue.

He added that the nuclear agreement is still in effect, and there is no UN decision to terminate it, which negates any possibility of re-activating the sanctions.

For his part, Professor of Middle East Studies at Tehran University, Hassan Ahmadian, said that the United States has unilaterally imposed sanctions on Iran, indicating that it is continuing this unilateral move now.

Ahmadian added that the European countries also did not abide by the nuclear agreement, even if their position is better than the United States, noting that Tehran does not count on Europe, even if the recent position of these countries establishes common ground for working with Iran.

Sanctions Junction

Regarding the possibility of European countries' steadfastness in the face of the United States regarding these sanctions against Tehran, Brugman stressed that Washington wants to impose its unilateral will on everyone, while Europe rejects that.

Ahmadian reiterated that the timing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s announcement that it would respond strongly to any attack that might target his country is remarkable, considering that it comes in response to numerous threats issued by Washington against Iranian interests, institutions and targets.

He added that the Iranian military action is always gradual, considering that the Iranian response to the assassination of the Quds Force commander, Qassem Soleimani, will inevitably come.

But the chief researcher of the American Foreign Policy Council, James Robbins, believed that it was not in the interest of US President Donald Trump to start a military battle with Iran as he approached an imminent presidential election.