UAE Sees Iran Going for Nuclear Deal after Trump Exit

Iran will be forced back to the negotiating table to broker a new nuclear deal because European support for the existing pact won’t be enough to save it now that the US has withdrawn, a senior United Arab Emirates official has said.

Tehran will come to that realization within the “coming weeks,” Anwar Gargash, the UAE’s minister of state for foreign affairs, said in an interview in Abu Dhabi late Sunday.

“There has to be a new deal with new boundaries” that extends restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program, and addresses its ballistic missile program and “regional meddling,” he said, a reference to Iranian support for the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and militant groups.

“There is an Iranian bet on a dispute between the Americans and the Europeans,” Gargash said. “I think this bet is out of place. A unified and clear message to Iran would increase the chance of finding new alternatives.”

Although the UAE is not a signatory to the 2015 nuclear deal, it lobbied against it together with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries that fear the expansion of Iran’s regional influence. While their efforts failed with the Obama administration, they found, together with Israel, a more receptive audience in President Donald Trump, whom they pressed to ditch the agreement.

The new US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, is due to deliver a speech outlining the US approach to Iran later Monday.

Trump said he would reimpose old sanctions and add new ones when he announced May 8 that his country would leave the accord. While Europe has pledged its commitment to the multiparty deal, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has likened the pact to a patient on life support, telling lawmakers it’s not clear to what extent Europe can resist US pressure and sanctions, according to a lawmaker cited on Sunday by state-run Mehr news agency.

The European Union is working on measures to protect EU companies operating in Iran, but that may not be enough to persuade them to invest and risk being sanctioned or shut out of the global banking system.

France’s Total drove home that point last week when it decided to stop its Iran gas projects, concluding they posed too big a risk, given the company’s large US operations and reliance on American banks for financing.