TEHRAN, August 28. /TASS/. The Iranian Foreign Ministry has branded the decision by the UK, Germany and France to initiate the process of reinstating UN sanctions against the Islamic republic as a "provocative and unjustified escalation."

Tehran will respond "in kind" to the actions of the EU Three countries, the Iranian foreign policy agency said.

"The actions of the three countries who consciously ignore the wider context and distort the sequence of events essentially reward the guilty and punish the victim. <...> This decision by the three European countries will seriously undermine the current process of interaction and cooperation between Iran and the IAEA. Such a provocative and unfounded escalation will receive an appropriate response," the ministry’s statement reads.

Earlier, Britain, Germany and France initiated the process of restoring sanctions against Iran after the failure of negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program. The foreign ministers of the three countries said in a joint statement that they notified the UN Security Council of their decision.

On August 26, Iran and the European trio held talks in Geneva at the level of deputy foreign ministers. During the meeting, the EU three demanded that Iran resume allowing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) access to its nuclear facilities and continue talks on reaching a new agreement on 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.

Iranian nuclear issue

The five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany struck a nuclear deal with Iran in 2015 to address the crisis over its nuclear program. Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018.

Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany, China, the US and France have been in talks with Iran in Vienna since April 2021, seeking to restore the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in its original form, without achieving any specific results.

In response to Washington’s withdrawal from the JCPOA, in 2020, the Iranian parliament passed a law outlining a strategic plan to remove sanctions and protect the Iranian people’s interests. As part of this plan, Iran scaled back several obligations under the nuclear deal, particularly by suspending inspections by the IAEA beyond the safeguard agreement related to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and prohibiting the use of stringent monitoring measures.

Earlier, Iran vowed to withdraw from the NPT if the snapback mechanism, allowing for the return of all UN Security Council sanctions against Tehran that were suspended under the JCPOA is activated.

In 2025, five rounds of negotiations between Iran and the US failed to yield significant progress. The diplomatic process was hindered by Israel’s military operation targeting Iran, followed by US strikes on three key sites related to Tehran’s nuclear program.