Araqchi: Europe stances very good, but progress slow

“Their political stances have been very good,” Abbas Araqchi said, but critiqued “their failure so far to bring about operational approaches and meet our expectations.”
He was speaking in response to a question about a decision made by the EU to set up a ‘special-purpose vehicle’ (SPV) to bypass the US sanctions, the Iranian news agency the Young Journalists Club reported on Friday.

“It is a fact that the Europeans moved much slower than we expected” in the direction of introducing the system, Araqchi said.

He, however, expressed hope that “in a very near future, this mechanism will be announced and formally registered in Europe before going gradually operational.”

Europe possessed an ”obvious and clear” political will to help the Islamic Republic in the face of the sanctions, the official noted. He called it “unprecedented” for the continent to support a country, especially Iran, in face of US sanctions.

As an instance of the European will, he cited a move by British, French, and German foreign and finance ministers to sign a joint statement with the European Union’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini last week, in which they pledged to work together to create the SPV.

“Expert work is still underway,” the deputy foreign minister noted, and said that there were many legal complications and aspects to the evolution of such a system. At the same time, a similar mechanism had to be established inside Iran to be able to interact with the European one, he noted.

The European parties to the nuclear deal comprised the US, the UK, France, Russia, China and Germany. The US withdrew in May and announced on Monday that it had restored all the sanctions against Iran that had been lifted under the accord.

/SR