Iran drafts urgent bill to withdraw from nuclear treaty

Iran’s parliament on Thursday began drafting an urgent bill to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), in response to a move by the UK, France and Germany to reimpose UN sanctions on the country over its nuclear programme.

Speaking to the semi-official Tasnim News Agency, Iranian lawmakerHossein Ali Haji Deligani, said the draft would be submitted to parliament’s internal system tomorrow, before being placed on the agenda for open sessions next week, where it will undergo discussion and voting. 

The three European powers, known as the E3, announced on Wednesday that they had triggered the “snapback mechanism”, a process under the 2015 nuclear deal that allows UN sanctions on Iran to be automatically reimposed if Tehran is judged to have breached its commitments.

Deligani told Tasnim: “As expected, Germany, France and Britain have announced the activation of this mechanism.”

He added: “As we said earlier, these countries had already been applying the consequences of the snapback mechanism, including sanctions, even before its official announcement, so this is not new.”

Deligani went on: “We have a serious criticism of the performance of the diplomatic team and the Foreign Minister in dealing with these three countries, which are themselves the source of many problems in the world. If those pointless contacts and negotiations had not taken place, we would not now be facing the announcement of the snapback mechanism.”

He concluded: “This step represents the most basic reaction by parliament to what has happened, and it will be followed by other measures that will make the countries that pushed for the activation of the snapback mechanism regret their actions.”

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