[ad_1]
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union (EU) foreign ministers on Monday voiced their support for the adoption of new economic sanctions against Iran after Iran's conspiracy plot accusations in France and Denmark, diplomats said.
At a meeting in Brussels, Denmark and France informed their European counterparts of alleged conspiracies and the ministers agreed to consider targeted sanctions against Iranians, although it was not the case. no details or names have been discussed, five diplomats told Reuters.
Even though it is still in its infancy, the EU's willingness to penalize the Iranians would be the first of its kind in years, after months of internal divisions, on how to punish Iranians accused of destabilizing activities. Europe and the Middle East.
So far, the EU has been striving to enforce the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and the world powers whose US President Donald Trump has removed in May. He was less willing to consider sanctions, instead seeking talks with Tehran.
Iran has warned that it could abandon the nuclear deal if the EU powers do not protect its commercial and financial benefits.
France has already imposed sanctions on two Iranians and the Iranian intelligence services for a failed plot to bomb a rally near Paris organized by an Iranian opposition group in exile. One option is to establish these asset freezes at European level, diplomats said.
Denmark, which suspected last October that an intelligence service of the Iranian government would have attempted to carry out an assassination plot on its soil, is also open to sanctions at the level of the country. EU, diplomats told Reuters.
In October, France declared that there was no doubt that the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence was at the origin of the plot to attack the demonstration of Iranian exiles near Paris.
He froze assets belonging to Tehran's intelligence services and two Iranian nationals – a Vienna-based diplomat currently detained in Belgium for conspiracy and Deputy Minister and Director General of Intelligence Saeid Hashemi Moghadam.
Neither seems to have held any assets in France. Paris has also quietly expelled an Iranian diplomat, diplomatic sources told Reuters last month.
Iran has denied any involvement in any alleged conspiracy.
As part of the 2015 agreement, Iran has restricted its controversial nuclear program, widely seen in the West as a disguised effort to develop the means to make atomic bombs, in exchange for ending international sanctions against him.
MISSILE SANCTIONS NOT STOLEN
In March, Britain, France and Germany proposed to sanction Iran for the development of ballistic missiles and its role in the war in Syria, but the initiative failed to garner sufficient support in the EU to enter into force.
Italy was an EU country that was unwilling to accept further measures to preserve its trade relations with Iran.
In an effort to balance Iranian policy, ministers at their Monday meeting also tried to move forward with the establishment of a special mechanism to trade with Iran that could be governed by the right to the EU, and not by national law.
The Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) is a kind of clearing house that could help reconcile Iranian oil and gas exports with EU goods purchases as part of a deal. Effective bartering bypassing US sanctions, which rely on the overall use of the dollar as oil sales.
Despite technical difficulties and delays, the EU believes that this formula could protect the various Member States from US sanctions that were reimposed in trade with Iran after Washington's withdrawal from the nuclear deal.
"There is a desire for the financial vehicle … to be put in place quickly," French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters.
However, no country has presented itself as a potential host. Their reluctance comes from fears that the fact that SPV relies on local banks to regularize its trade with Iran may result in US sanctions, cutting lenders' access to US markets, diplomats said.
Luxembourg is considered a good candidate to manage the Iranian SPV given its experience in creating a similar mechanism during the eurozone financial crisis of 2009-2012.
Report by Robin Emmott; Edited by Alastair Macdonald and Mark Heinrich
