TEHRAN, July 21. /TASS/. Iran, Russia and China will hold a trilateral meeting in Tehran on July 22 to discuss Iran’s nuclear program and the European trio’s threats to activate the snapback mechanism to restore the UN Security Council’s sanctions, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmail Baghaei said.
"A trilateral meeting will take place in Tehran tomorrow, <...> which will involve Iran, China and Russia; one of the focuses will be to discuss the nuclear issue, including the possible restoration of sanctions," he told an annual press conference.
According to the diplomat, Iran, Russia and China see eye-to-eye on many international issues; the three countries also maintain strong relations. "Russia and China are members of the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action - TASS), as well as permanent members of the UN Security Council, and they can play a role in any process within the Security Council," Baghaei added.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson noted that Tehran, Moscow and Beijing had held "constructive consultations" over the past year, discussing the possible reintroduction of the UN Security Council’s sanctions on Iran. "We regularly hold consultations with these countries in order to find solutions that would prevent the mechanism from being activated or mitigate its consequences. A return of sanctions lifted as part of the JCPOA has no legal, logical, moral or political grounds," the Iranian diplomat concluded.
Situation around Iranian nuclear program
On July 25, Iran and the European trio (France, Germany and the United Kingdom) will hold talks in Istanbul, focused on disagreements over the Iranian nuclear program.
The Axios news website reported earlier, citing sources, that the US, the UK, Germany and France had agreed to set the end of August as a deadline for reaching a nuclear deal with Iran. Otherwise, the European trio plans to launch the snapback mechanism that will reinstate the UN Security Council's sanctions against Tehran, which were lifted based on the 2015 agreements. The snapback mechanism can be activated starting on October 18, 2025.
In 2015, Iran, along with China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK and the US signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, resolving a crisis that began in 2002 amid Western accusations that Tehran was seeking nuclear weapons. However, in 2018, US President Donald Trump announced Washington's withdrawal from the JCPOA and reinstated all sanctions against Iran. In response, Tehran declared in 2020 that it would scale back its commitments under the JCPOA and restrict International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors’ access to its nuclear facilities. Negotiations aimed at reviving the nuclear deal, held in Vienna from 2021 to 2022, ended without a resolution.
Five rounds of talks have been held between Iran and the United States since the beginning of 2025 but no result has been achieved due to Israel’s launch of a military operation against Tehran, with the United States delivering airstrikes on Iranian nuclear sites. The European trio, which also held talks with Tehran, failed to mediate a new nuclear deal.