German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas will travel to Iran next week in a desperate bid to save the nuclear deal. Berlin is coordinating this latest diplomatic move in consultation with the UK and France, the German state media confirmed.
The move comes just weeks after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani threatened to flood Europe with drugs and illegal immigrants if the European powers fail to get Iran’s faltering economy back on track. “You are obliged,” he warned Europeans last month, “for your own security, for protecting your youths against drugs as well as controlling influx of immigrants.”
Tehran expects Germany, France, and the UK to protect its lucrative oil trade in the face of mounting U.S. sanctions. Otherwise, the regime has threatened to boost uranium enrichment and openly pursue its nuclear objectives.
The German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported Foreign Minister’s surprise visit:
Heiko Maas has announced he will travel to Tehran next week in an effort to salvage the Iran nuclear deal. Maas, the first German diplomat to visit Iran in over two years, will meet counterpart Mohammad Zarif on Monday.German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas will travel to Tehran to meet his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Zarif, a ministry spokesperson announced Thursday.(…)He will explore options to preserve the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” (JCPOA), more commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal.
Germany has reiterated its commitment to the Obama-era deal. “We standing clearly on one side…to preserve the nuclear accord,” a German Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said Thursday.
“Europeans are on the same page: If Iran does not uphold the deal in its entirety anymore, then the deal is dead.” Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote. “If Iran starts enriching Uranium, the U.S. military strike against the nuclear facilities and the installations of [Islamic] Revolutionary Guard become a concrete option,” the newspaper opined.
While President Donald Trump has refused to budge in the face of Iranian threats, Germany has been keen to appease the angry Mullah regime. “If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again,” the president tweeted last month. Following renewed threats from Iran, German politicians have been urging the foreign minister to head to Tehran. “Maas needs to visit Tehran immediately to keep Iran within the accord,” Omid Nouripour, The German Green Party’s foreign policy spokesman, had demanded.
So far, the U.S. pressure has prevented the European Union from floating the planned ‘special purpose vehicle’ to protect Iranian oil trade from sanctions. The payment system, named Instex, seeks to hide the EU-Iranian money trail and shield European companies from prosecution under the U.S. law.
The Trump administration is committed to countering the EU-backed payment system, which it sees as a mechanism for money laundering and financing jihad terrorism, especially in light of the central role played by the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a designated terrorist group, in Iran’s oil and other vital sectors.
Despite repeated assurances to keep the perks the Obama-era deal flowing, the European powers have failed to offset the impact of the U.S. sanctions. Reeling under ever stiffening sanctions, Tehran has set a July 7 deadline for the Europeans to renegotiate the 2015 deal.
[Cover image via YouTube]
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