The European Union’s top defense and diplomatic officials convene in Vienna on Thursday with the teetering Iran nuclear agreement and Middle East stability at the top of their agenda.
The meetings coincide with publication of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s quarterly Iran inspections report, which is due by Friday and will likely show the Islamic Republic continues meeting nuclear obligations made under an agreement jettisoned by President Donald Trump in May.
“Europe is doing the right things but it’s doing it very slowly,” said Richard Dalton, the U.K.’s former Ambassador to Iran who’s now the President of the British Iranian Chamber of Commerce. European banks are “over implementing” sanctions to protect U.S. market access, according to Dalton, who urged EU officials to focus on protecting allowable agricultural and medical exports to Iran.
Even modest EU attempts to maintain relations with Iran have drawn U.S. rebuke. An 18 million-euro ($21 million) EU package to promote trade with Iranian small businesses “sends the wrong message” by supporting the Islamic Republic’s government, the State Department said.
“They continue to be the single biggest destabilizing element in the Middle East,” U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis said at a briefing on Tuesday in Washington.
While U.S. officials have conceded Iran continues to meet its nuclear obligations under the July 2015 deal signed in the Austrian capital—which capped the capacity and production of material that could be used in weapons in return for sanctions relief—they accuse Tehran’s government of meddling in Middle Eastern conflicts from Syria to Yemen.
“There is no problem with continuing relations and negotiations with Europe, but hope should be abandoned regarding matters such as the nuclear deal,” Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a meeting with President Hassan Rouhani and members of his cabinet, according to the leader’s website.
The EU meeting in Vienna comes at a complicated time for the 28-member bloc, with member states busy preparing for the U.K.’s exit from the EU, autocratic leaders in eastern Europe pushing the bounds of the rule of law and a clash heating up with Italy over migration and spending. The foreign ministers will have a busy two days in the Austrian capital, where they are also expected to discuss the situation in North Korea, trans-Atlantic relations and the EU’s possible enlargement in southeastern Europe.