German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock does not want to declare the negotiations to revive the Iranian nuclear deal a definitive failure despite months of deadlock and the brutal crackdown on anti-regime protests in the country.
"There are indeed some who say that we should say the whole thing has failed," the Green politician admitted at the end of a meeting with her counterparts from the G7 leading industrialized nations in the German city of Münster on Friday. But saying this in diplomacy "means you now accept that there will be further [uranium] enrichment."
Baerbock is "deeply convinced that Iran, the regime, will not get better if they have a nuclear weapon." That would only make things worse for regional security and also for the people in Iran, she said.
"There must be no further enrichment, there must be access for the [International Atomic Energy Agency] IAEA to the nuclear power plants," the German foreign minister demanded of Tehran, stressing that this was what Iran had committed to "in international treaties."
The 2015 international nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers, aimed at preventing the country from developing a nuclear bomb, has been on hold since then US president Donald Trump pulled the US out and imposed tough sanctions on Iran in 2018. After that, Tehran also failed to comply with requirements to limit its nuclear programme.
Because of the crackdown on protests in Iran, leaders in the US and Europe recently questioned the nuclear talks aimed at reviving the deal.
Observers also consider an agreement in the nuclear dispute rather unlikely at present, not least because of Iranian military aid to Russia in the war against Ukraine.
