Yves here. I am running this post in part as an appeal to readers for a fact check. This article makes clear that European states are considering triggering the JCPOA’s so-called snapback provisions. Even though the US is not presently a member of the JCOPA, it can get one of its good stooges who are still party to the agreement and on the UN Security Council, like the UK, to initiate the snapback process. The effect would be that the former, even more stringent sanctions on Iran would go back into force and would be binding on all UN member without a new vote by all UN members.
The snapback provisions expire on October 18. What I find confusing is that this post describes the snapback being bruited about as a live threat against Iran. However, Alastair Crooke, who is seen as very well informed about events in the region, said regularly last spring that there was a procedural drill involved, with Iran being allowed time to make what amounts to a rebuttal, that put the last date for triggering the JCPOA snapback well before October 18. Crooke had depicted the time needed to go though all the steps before the October 18 drop dead date meant the snapback procedure needed to be initiated by June. He’s said mid June as well as end of June, as you can see below. Crooke had further argued that the snapback timetable was a big, if not the reason, that Israel insisted that action had to be taken against Iran by the end of spring at the latest.
Here is a representative discussion by Crooke. The key part begins at 7:00:
One of them that came out of the blue is that the E3 that is the European states who are still members of the JCPOA, Germany France and the UK, have told Iran that they are going to trigger snapback by the end of June this year. And so I think this is an interesting, I mean clearly concerted, the Europeans doing the work. A US cannot do it because it’s no longer a member of the process. But the snapback system anyway expires in October. But for various reasons there are processes within it where it takes a little time to take effect because there’s a reconciliation point where Iran can make their points and then it goes into effect a little after that. So there isn’t that much time. Maybe this is why he [Trump] said it had to be done by spring, this was the deadline that everyone was talking about. .
The best description of the snapback implementation process I have found on a quick search is not precise about timelines but does not mention Iran having a right to respond to the charges.1 Even though I trust Crooke all day more than I do Simon Watkins, Crooke has also been blaming the stripping out of a UN Security Council member being able to veto the implementation of the process on the US, when in fact that was Russia’s doing.
But if Crooke’s general take on the process is correct, and key players though the snapback needed to be set in motion during June to beat the procedure’s expiration in October, even assuming generously that a couple of extra weeks were built into the June assumption, end of July would seem to be too late.
And that would explain why Iran is so chill. The snapback threat would be empty, mere posturing for the Western press. Perhaps the US and its camp followers anticipate they can get enough Western states to implement the snapback in the absence of them being binding UN sanctions to still be able to tighten the economic screws on Iran further.
By Simon Watkins, a former senior FX trader and salesman, financial journalist, and best-selling author. He was Head of Forex Institutional Sales and Trading for Credit Lyonnais, and later Director of Forex at Bank of Montreal. He was then Head of Weekly Publications and Chief Writer for Business Monitor International, Head of Fuel Oil Products for Platts, and Global Managing Editor of Research for Renaissance Capital in Moscow. Originally published at OilPrice
- Talks between Iran and the European Troika (France, Germany, UK) over the weekend, initiated under U.S. guidance, aimed to gauge Iran’s willingness to revive the JCPOA before an October 18 EU deadline for reimposing snapback sanctions.
- Europe is increasingly aligned with Washington’s harder stance, citing Iran’s expanding military ties with Russia and North Korea, including missile transfers and nuclear cooperation, and is now demanding Tehran limit missile range to 1,000 km.
- If Iran fails to comply, Europe will likely trigger snapback sanctions, potentially prompting Iran to exit the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
There was a time when Europe broadly was in favour not just of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, colloquially ‘the nuclear deal’) but also of continuing with it even after the U.S.’s unilateral withdrawal from the arrangement on 8 May 2018. This was based partly on long-running historical ties between France (one of the three key economic and political powerhouses of the continent, along with Germany and Great Britain) and the pre- and post-1979 Islamic Revolution regimes, and Germany’s considerable commercial ties with Iran. Britain has occupied a neutral-at-best stance since it and the U.S. effected a change of regime in Iran in 1953 with the removal of the enormously popular Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh (through ‘Operation Boot’ as it was codenamed by Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, or ‘Operation Ajax’ by the U.S.’s Central Intelligence Agency) and his replacement by General Fazlollah Zahedi, as detailed in full in my latest book on the new global oil market order. So, what has been happening in talks over the weekend – orchestrated in large part by the U.S. – between Iran and this European ‘troika’?
It took some time for continental Europe – which excludes Britain – to appreciate the full gravitas of the security threat posed to it after Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022. This comes not just from the obvious intention of Russian President Vladimir Putin to push further westwards into Europe if his military is victorious in Ukraine, but also from the increasingly unified bloc of enemies to it and its key economic and political allies around the world that also includes China, Iran, North Korea and their allies too. China continues to provide Iran’s chief source of financing keeping it afloat in the form of continued oil imports, North Korea has troops fighting on the ground in Ukraine for Russia, and Iran sustains a steady flow of drones, missiles, and other weaponry and support to this illegal Russian incursion. It could well be said that Europe’s limp response to Russia’s ‘test-invasions’ of sovereign European territories Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 (with the subsequent unopposed annexation of its Crimea region) gave Putin the confidence to go ahead with the full-scale version in 2022. The U.S. and Britain certainly thought this was the case, which is why both have pushed so strongly to end the culture of dependence in Europe on cheap and plentiful energy supplies from Russia that turned much of the continent into the Kremlin’s fat, pliant lapdog. In so doing, the U.S. and Britain have laid the foundation for a broad, deep and strong economic, political, and military alliance of democratic countries capable of facing down the threats posed by the enemies ranged against them.
It is in this context, then, that these weekend talks between the European Troika were set in motion by the U.S. According to a senior security source in Washington spoken to exclusively at the end of last week by OilPrice.com, it was thought that a “scouting mission” to ascertain Iran’s genuine position towards negotiating a new version of the JCPOA was best carried out by Europe, following the U.S.’s role in recent attacks against the Islamic Republic. It was also thought by Washington that the Iranians would be extremely keen to engage with Europe as it is getting very close to a critical deadline for Tehran and Europe. This is the European Union’s (E.U.) 18 October deadline to impose snapback sanctions on Iran. These comprise a comprehensive range of UN Security Council sanctions that were lifted from the Iranian economy when the original JCPOA was signed in 2015. These would include multiple new financial sanctions on companies and individuals and increased surveillance by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). The FATF has 40 active criteria and mechanisms in place to prevent money laundering — an activity that is vital to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) activities across the world. It also has nine criteria and mechanisms in place to do the same for the financing of terrorism and related activities — again, a core of the IRGC’s role in promoting Iran’s brand of Islam around the globe. The FATF also has swingeing powers to wield against individuals, companies, or countries who transgress any of its standards and is extremely aggressive in using them by degrees, depending on whether the sanctioned entity is on its ‘grey’ or ‘black’ list. After the 18 October deadline – if snapback sanctions are not reimposed — all UN sanctions on Iran will be lifted.
Given this, Washington reasons that Iran would go to considerable lengths to avoid having these snapback sanctions reimposed by Europe, so would consider making some significant concessions to avoid this happening, and this can be seen as a gauge of how much the U.S. could benefit from full discussions on the JCPOA in the near future. In this context, it is apposite to note that Washington has the same short-term and long-term objectives in any such new negotiations as it did before the recent Israeli/U.S. attacks on Iran, and it is also crucial to note that none of these objectives are negotiable in any future discussions, the Washington source underlined to OilPrice.com. The short-term objective is for Iran to have not one scrap of enriched material that could be used to make a nuclear weapon, both now and at any point in the future. This brings into play the adjunct element of this objective, which is having independent inspectors able at any time to fully inspect any facility anywhere in Iran that it wants from top to bottom for as long as it takes. The long-term objective is to remove the powers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – through the FATF and other mechanisms related to destroying its financial base – and then if necessary, removing the Supreme Leader from power. This option may well be required, given that at the centre of the guiding principles for all top-level Iranian politics is the concept of Velayat-e-Faqih, which means that all serious political and religious authority is entrusted to the Shia clergy, and their ultimate authority, the Supreme Leader. Popular support in Iran for the return of the U.S.-based exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi — the eldest son of Farah Diba and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran – has been steadily growing for weeks, according to a senior source who works closely with Iran’s Petroleum Ministry, exclusively spoken to by OilPrice.com over the weekend.
From Europe’s perspective, the mood before – and after the end of the weekend’s talks –remains unequivocally in favour of imposing the full set of snapback sanctions on Iran, according to a very senior E.U. security source exclusively spoken to by OilPrice.com a few days ago. “More information keeps coming in about the increased number of Russian nuclear scientists sent to Iran between June 2024 and February 2025 and the three top missile experts from Pyongyang who have been in Iran for 140 days or so,” he said. “Verified reports show that Iran is becoming ever more active in the Russia-Belarus campaign of eroding NATO’s eastern flank defences particularly along the vulnerable northern and southern border defences that are most vulnerable,” he added. “In the last delivery of mid- and long-range missiles from Tehran to Moscow, the IRGC included — as they had promised in February in a visit to Moscow – ‘Etemad’ [a late generation ballistic missile], and ‘Fath 360’ [a multi-lunch ballistic missile launching system], with most of the latter to be positioned by Moscow near the Belarus border with Poland,” he underlined. “Even more recent intelligence received from Iran of its newest missile capabilities confirm successful testing of the new generation of solid fuel missiles with a range of 4,200 kilometres carrying a payload of 700 kilogrammes – and this range could be enhanced to 4,700 kilometres if the payload is reduced to 450 kilogrammes – effectively allowing Iran to target most of the major cities in Europe,” he told OilPrice.com. “So, the [European] Troika has now included a new condition for any further JCPOA discussions that requires Tehran to restrict its missile range to 1,000 kilometres – and Tehran made it clear that it will not accept this,” he highlighted.
The U.S. has already been fully briefed by the European Troika on the results of the weekend talks with Iran, which it saw as Tehran’s last chance for a long-term diplomatic solution to the long-running problem between Iran and the West over its nuclear intentions. “The view in Washington is that if Iran does not show considerable willingness to make concessions then the course of events would be snapback sanctions reimposed by Europe, which may then lead to Iran withdrawing from the NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] and then a significant escalation of preventative measures [against Iran’s nuclear ambitions] by the U.S. and its allies,” the E.U. source concluded.
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As October 18, 2025, approaches – the tenth anniversary of the JCPOA and the deadline for deciding whether to terminate or extend UN Security Council Resolution 2231 – the snapback mechanism outlined in the resolution has once again drawn attention in Iran.
UN Security Council Resolution 2231 was adopted after the JCPOA agreement was reached, and it annulled six previous Security Council resolutions regarding Iran’s nuclear program and most of the UN sanctions.
However, it included a provision that if the Islamic Republic fails to comply with the JCPOA, the sanctions could quickly be reimposed.
Britain has said it is prepared to trigger the snapback mechanism against Iran over violations of the nuclear deal.
How Does the Snapback Mechanism Work?
Any of the current members of the JCPOA – France, the UK, Germany, China, and Russia – can invoke the snapback mechanism if they claim Iran has violated the agreement.
The United States, having withdrawn from the JCPOA and reimposed sanctions during Donald Trump’s presidency, has lost its political leverage to use snapback.
However, it can request its activation through other countries. The U.S. government failed in its attempt to invoke snapback during the first term of Trump’s presidency.
Four of the JCPOA member states that are permanent members of the UN Security Council can directly activate the mechanism.
Germany, which is not a member of the Security Council, must seek activation through one of its permanent members.
In the first step, one or more JCPOA member states must send a letter to the UN Secretary-General and the president of the Security Council about Iran’s non-compliance with the terms of the agreement.
Once the letter is submitted, the president of the Security Council must inform the other members of the warning.
The Security Council has 10 days from the formal receipt of the letter to vote on a draft resolution regarding the continuation or termination of the suspension of Security Council sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
No veto power exists, and the time frame is only 30 days.
In the Security Council’s vote on the resolution, veto power was removed following a proposal by Russia, meaning no country could block the draft resolution or prevent the return of sanctions on Iran using a veto.
If a country uses its veto, it would effectively veto the continuation of sanctions relief for Iran, leading to the immediate reimposition of UN Security Council sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program.
The continuation of sanctions relief can only be approved if nine votes in favor are achieved in the Security Council, with no permanent member vetoing it.
