Zarif: "We are on track", further progress "in the coming weeks". Mogherini: preserving the principles of the agreement. French exports to Iran have tripled since the signing. In 2017, German exports reached three billion.
Brussels (AsiaNews / Agencies) - Iran and the European partners signing the historic nuclear pact (UK, France and Germany) are ready to sign a "broad agreement" to save the basic principles of the text signed in Vienna in 2015.
Tehran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, currently in Brussels on the last stop on a diplomatic tour that has touched Russia and China, reports that "we are on track" and "much will depend on the coming weeks".
The EU diplomacy continues its campaign to keep the JCPOA alive, in response to US President Donald Trump's decision to cancel it and reintroduce new sanctions targeting the heart of the Iranian economy (and its partners). At the end of yesterday's summit in Brussels, Zarif spoke of "a good start" of an "already started" process.
He is convinced that there will be further progress "in the weeks ahead". The head of EU diplomacy Federica Mogherini added that the experts "are already at work" to keep the principles of the agreement alive. One of the objectives is to keep Iran's oil export channel and bank transactions open with Tehran, in view of US sanctions.
After all, European companies are among the first and foremost to benefit from the signing of the historic agreement, which represented (perhaps) the most important foreign policy success of former US President Barack Obama. German exports to Iran reached three billion euros in 2017. French exports to the Islamic Republic rose sharply from 562 million euros in 2015 to 1.5 billion last year. The oil giant Trans Total has already promised to invest almost five billion dollars in the South Pars oil field.