Europe’s ‘snapback sanctions’ would hit recalcitrant Iran hard

Though Israel and the United States dealt Iran’s nuclear programme a significant blow in June this year, there is heightened awareness of the risk its recovery could pose to the world. This is why European countries party to a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran are considering calling for snapback sanctions.

Reuters is reporting that the snapback sanctions process could begin as early as 28 August. Lahav Harkov, who spoke at Limmud Johannesburg on 17 August discussed what this would mean for Iran. Harkov is the Israel-based senior political correspondent for the Washington-based Jewish Insider. A former Knesset reporter and diplomatic correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, she has written extensively about the Iran nuclear deal reached between Iran and the West in 2015 and Iran’s violations thereof.

“The European parties to the 2015 Iran deal, the E3, namely France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have threatened to use snapback sanctions on Iran if it doesn’t come to an acceptable nuclear deal by the end of August,” Harkov said. This gives enough time to implement them before the deal expires in October.

The snapback sanctions say that at any point, any country party to the original 2015 Iran deal can go to the United Nations Security Council to ask to bring back all those stipulated sanctions. This wouldn’t be subject to a vote, and could therefore not be vetoed. However, when the US attempted to evoke these sanctions in 2020, arguing that Iran was violating the deal, its bid was denied since it had formally left the deal in 2018.

And so, from about 2020 onwards, Iran rapidly increased its uranium enrichment. “By last year, it reached the point where it had large quantities of uranium, enriched to 60% purity,” Harkov said. “You need 90% for a nuclear bomb. But if you have large quantities of 60% you could already use it to build a bomb. There were different estimates of how many bombs they could build. But as Iran’s Supreme Leader has said in the past, Israel is a ‘one-bomb country’.”

While the Europeans have consistently threatened to call for snapback sanctions if violations continue, they have never acted. Now they are threatening to do so in a much clearer manner, Harkov said. If the sanctions are imposed, they will have a big impact on Iran’s weakened economy and put significant pressure on the country, she argued. “They would be respected by many countries, which wouldn’t do business with Iran, although it’s unclear if this would include China or Russia,” she said.

Yet, Europe would prefer a diplomatic deal with Iran, Harkov said, largely because of its business and economic interests. “This preference is also rooted in Europe’s strong belief that diplomacy will always prevent war. Historically, we’ve seen that that’s not true.”

Meanwhile, Iran continues to argue that it has a civilian nuclear programme, for research and for energy purposes, even though we all know that it’s sitting on some of the world’s biggest oil reserves, Harkov said. Yet, it has refused to give up on the right to enrich, even during three months of negotiations with the Trump administration.

Within a few days of negotiations reaching that three-month mark, Israel struck Iran’s nuclear facilities with greater success than it expected, Harkov said. Though 29 Israelis tragically lost their lives, Israel had been preparing for mass casualty events. Israel successfully hit multiple nuclear Iranian targets, while Iran’s air defences completely collapsed.

In Israel, buildings as well as multiple homes were impacted, yet overall, the damage was much less than anticipated.

Harkov also addressed the debate over when the US decided to bomb the underground nuclear facility at Fordow. “I travelled with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to the White House in April [as part of the press team] to Budapest to see Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán,” she said. During their meeting, Netanyahu and Orbán decided to call United States President Donald Trump, who suggested that Netanyahu travel to Washington to continue their discussion.

“We were told that the talk was about tariffs,” Harkov said. “I have reason to believe that we were lied to, and that Netanyahu brought up Iran on the call. And basically, Trump said, ‘I don’t want to do this over the phone and with Viktor Orbán there. So come, let’s talk.’”

Though the media contingent knew that Netanyahu had deep concern about the Iranian nuclear threat, it thought Iran would be discussed only briefly. Yet the tariffs perhaps took 10 minutes, and Iran was probably the main topic discussed, Harkov said. “Israeli defence minister Israel Katz said Trump told Netanyahu, ‘I’m not giving you an answer. Let’s see how this goes for you, and if it’s going well, then maybe I’ll help out. If it’s going badly, I had nothing to do with it.’” As it ultimately worked out better than expected, the US joined Israel in bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities.

While Trump said that the nuclear sites were “obliterated”, there are no independent sources who can go underground and see what’s left, Harkov said. Yet satellite images didn’t reveal any significant movement of trucks that could have moved hundreds of centrifuges from an underground facility to another safe location, so most were likely bombed.

“Obliterated is probably not the right word, but there are numerous indicators that Iran’s nuclear programme has been rolled back years. This is one of the ways in which Israel is much safer now than it was on 6 October 2023.”

Nonetheless, there is also still infrastructure that Iran could use to enrich uranium to continue its nuclear programme, Harkov said. This is why the Trump administration wanted to enter talks with Iran to lift some sanctions in exchange for it agreeing to give up the nuclear programme completely. To date, Iran hasn’t agreed to return to the table.

“As we don’t have any independent first-person analysis other than satellite photos of what’s left of the nuclear programme, Europe finally seems to be taking things seriously,” Harkov said.