European powers still want to hand Donald Trump next week a plan to save the Iran nuclear deal, but they have also started work on different scenarios if the US president makes good on a threat to withdraw, Western sources said.
Six sources told Reuters that European powers have started work on protecting EU-Iranian business ties if the US withdraws from the agreement.
France, Britain and Germany aim to present to the White House a separate political agreement that commits to taking a tougher stance on Iran if they can agree it in time with the US State Department, their American interlocutors.
Several of the sources said they were skeptical the effort would succeed, and all said the Europeans were also working on damage limitation scenarios if it fails.
The political agreement, which is a culmination of transatlantic diplomacy, does not include Iran or Russia and China, the other parties to the accord, the sources told Reuters.
It seeks to spell out to Trump that Europe will seek to contain Tehran’s ballistic missile program, its influence in Syria and Yemen, the terms by which inspectors visit suspect Iranian sites, and “sunset” clauses under which some of its terms expire.
Meanwhile, Hossein Jaberi Ansari, the Iranian foreign minister's senior assistant for special political affairs, said that Iran has held negotiations with Germany, France, Britain and Italy in Rome, Agence France Presse reported.
The closed-door talks that were sponsored by the European Union came a week ahead of a decision by Trump to withdraw or remain in the nuclear deal.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron in Washington last week proposed that, irrespective of Trump’s decision, there should be a wider discussion between Iran and the powers behind the original deal, which took 12 years to negotiate, working towards a grand bargain.
That would incorporate the existing nuclear deal and the issues currently discussed between Europeans and Americans. But it is hard to see how Iran could be brought back to the table. Tehran says it is abiding by the terms of the 2015 deal and has no intention to renegotiate it.
