European Powers Trigger Final Rites to a Dying Security Agreement

European powers, E3 - France, Germany and the United Kingdom (UK), have triggered a formal dispute mechanism against Iranian breaches of the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, signed to bring secure stability to the Middle East and the broader World and restricting the Islamic Republic's ambitions to develop nuclear weapons.

The Deal, officially called, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was completed at Vienna, Austria, July 14, 2015, between Iran, the United States (US), the European Union (EU), China and Russia. In exchange for economic relief, Iran suspended its nuclear ambitions and obliged by the directives to send its enriched material out of the country. Prior to 2018, international monitors confirmed Iran was complying with the agreement.

However, upon the advent of Donald Trump to the White House in Washington, DC, he weakened the international pact by removing the US from the signed agreement in 2018. Since then, tensions have heightened between the US and Iran, hence threatening all provisions to the security agreement. EU nations, China and Russia have endeavored to keep the pact in place. 

But with the Trump ordered assassination of an Iranian general in Baghdad, Iraq, January 2, 2020, tensions soared between the US and Iran leading to Iran's announcement that it would seek to continue its uranium enrichment program. Iran has claimed entitlement to renewed uranium enrichment in response to reinstated US sanctions since 2018.

France, Germany and the UK -  the E3 nations, according to BBC-News, have not accepted Iran's argument and have moved to trigger the formal dispute mechanism set out in article 36 of the deal to refer the dispute to a Joint Commission, which would have 15-days to resolve the issue. No dispute mechanism was triggered when Trump left the deal.

If complaints of non compliance by Iran are not satisfied in 15-days, the matter could be referred to the United Nations (UN) Security Council (SC), which as reported by the BBC-News, could vote to reimpose any sanctions on Iran that were lifted under the deal.

Amid heightened tensions between the US and Iran, and given recent events in Iraq and in Tehran, it could be deduced that the security stabilizing Iran Nuclear Deal is dying and all that remains in front of the inevitable death, is a Joint Commission review and a Security Council referral. Current affairs, therefore, suggest a return to greater security instability in the Middle East and in the World.