PARIS, July 7 (Reuters) – The French government will not trigger the Iran nuclear deal’s dispute resolution mechanism for now, instead giving itself one week to try to get all parties talking again after Iran decided to enrich uranium above limits agreed in 2015.
“It’s not an option at this moment,” a source at President Emmanuel Macron’s Elysee office said on Sunday. The dispute resolution mechanism could eventually lead to the reimposition of United Nations sanctions on Iran.
The French president on Sunday condemned the Iranian announcement, saying the decision was a “violation” of the agreement reached between Iran and world powers in 2015 to curb uranium enrichment.
Macron told his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, that he would try to have all parties resume dialogue by July 15, a statement released late Saturday showed.
The statement did not mention what would happen if dialogue failed to resume by then.
The French presidency did not say whether its approach had been coordinated with other European governments.
Iran said on Sunday it was prepared to enrich uranium at any level and with any amount, in further defiance of U.S. efforts to squeeze the country with sanctions and force it to renegotiate the nuclear deal.
(Reporting by Emmanuel Jarry, John Irish and Marine Pennetier; writing by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Inti Landauro Editing by Leigh Thomas and Dale Hudson)
