Iran says it is ready to resume nuclear talks if West shows goodwill

An Iranian member of parliament on Thursday said he was urgently drafting legislation to pull Tehran from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as retaliation for a move by European states to reimpose UN sanctions.

The plan, MP Hossein Ali Haji-Deligani told the Tasnim news agency, could be approved by parliament as early as next week.

The NPT, which Iran ratified in 1970, allows countries to acquire civilian nuclear power but bars the pursuit of atomic weapons and mandates cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency.

"Other measures that are regrettable for the key countries of the snapback will also be taken," he added without elaborating.

"There is no one in Iran who does not believe that negotiations with these countries are useless, so we must stop all our negotiations with them until they stop this duplicitous behavior."

"Will Europe live in a safer world if they use this dispute resolution mechanism in bad faith in order to go back to Security Council resolutions that we all decided to stop? What are they trying to gain? They try to support Israel," former top nuclear negotiator Mohammad-Javad Zarif told Foreign Policy in an interview.

Speaking before the Germany, Britain and France triggered a mechanism from the 2015 international nuclear deal the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to reimpose UN sanctions, Zarif said the troika was abusing that agreement.

"I don’t know what audacity they have in order to try to use the dispute resolution mechanism. It’s not called snapback in the JCPOA or the (United Nations) Security Council. It’s called 'dispute resolution mechanism.'"

The relative moderate added that the snapback move was part of an Israeli-Western strategy to confront Iran and thwart diplomacy.

"They use war, and then they use diplomacy, and then they use mechanisms to resolve disputes. This is indicative of bad faith."

Iran could face fresh shocks to its already deeply rattled currency, costs of living and growth prospects if UN sanctions lifted by a 2015 nuclear deal are reimposed.

Activation of the snapback mechanism would reinstate comprehensive UN sanctions which would include travel bans, asset freezes, UN inspections of Iranian shipments and arms trade prohibitions—but notably exclude direct sanctions on oil exports or the Central Bank of Iran.

Renewed UN sanctions would indirectly reduce oil revenues, constrain access to foreign currency and place heavy pressure on the rial.

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Outspoken conservatives had for over a decade seethed at the diplomacy which clinched the 2015 international nuclear deal the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action as a surrender of Iran's sovereignty to hostile outside powers.

"The JCPOA, the imposition of the trigger mechanism, the US withdrawal from the JCPOA and the 12-day war were all pieces of an American and Israeli plan," fulminated Mahmoud Nabavian, the deputy chairman of the Iranian parliament's national security and foreign policy committee.

"The authors the JCPOA's imposition and the trigger mechanism on the nation, some of whom are now brazenly seeking to make concessions to the enemy, must be tried," he added on X, apparently referring to Iranian moderates.

Britain, France and Germany on Thursday triggered a 30-day process - the so-called "snapback" mechanism - to reimpose UN sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program in a formal letter sent the UN Security Council.

Iran condemned the European sanctions move as malicious and illegal but stopped short of mentioning specific consequences and instead warned of an "appropriate response."

Just before the European move, another ultraconservative member of the parliamentary committee Alaeddin Boroujerdi mooted blocking the energy exports of its Arab neighbors if sanctions choked off its own flows.

"If Iran cannot export its oil, certainly something will happen that will stop the exporting of others’ oil," Tehran’s leading economic daily Donya-ye Eghtesad quoted him as saying. "We won’t sit and watch the compromising of all of our interests."

The threat has been repeatedly voiced by various Iranian politicians, including former presidents Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Hassan Rouhani, since the mid-1980s when Iran first attempted to close the Strait of Hormuz.

That move prompted a swift US military response which promptly decimated Iran’s naval forces in the Persian Gulf and destroyed two major oil platforms.

Kayhan on closing off commerce

The Kayhan newspaper, closely linked to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s office, warned against caving to Western demands to negotiate and advocated strength.

"The response to the West’s threat should be a threat rather than negotiating and taking a passive approach," it wrote a commentary.

"The West’s repetitive scenario leaves no room for optimism and expectations. Our experience shows that the West understands only the language of force," it added. "Iran should take strict decisions, from exiting the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to limiting access to the Strait of Hormuz, and show that the enemy’s threats will not remain unanswered."

For decades, Kayhan has advocated for closing the Strait of Hormuz so fervently that one social media user joked, “Let’s close the strait at least for 10 minutes only to do a favor to Kayhan’s editor!”

"Negotiating with the United States and Europe will lead to nothing other than humiliation, deceit, and wasting time," it said in another article.

Meanwhile, Kayhan dismissed any connection between the trigger mechanism and UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which the three European powers are invoking to reinstate pre-2015 sanctions on Iran.

Amid the radical reactions, one relatively moderate voice emerged from Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani, a conservative MP and yet another member of the National Security and Foreign Relations Committee.

Iran, he said, still had one month to respond to European demands and a boon could come in the form of Russia taking over the presidency of the UN Security Council in October.

Still, the European troika's move appeared designed to forestall that possibility with the 30-day process to restore international sanctions likely to be complete before the periodic change in the Security Council's leadership.

Britain, France and Germany on Thursday triggered a 30-day process—the so-called “snapback” mechanism—to restore the international sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program in a formal letter sent to the UN Security Council.

Activation of the snapback mechanism would reinstate comprehensive UN sanctions which would include travel bans, asset freezes, UN inspections of Iranian shipments and arms trade prohibitions—but notably exclude direct sanctions on oil exports or the Central Bank of Iran.

Restrictions on oil and banking have instead come mainly from unilateral US and EU measures imposed after the UN resolutions, which put direct pressure on Iran’s foreign exchange earnings. Energy exports are the state's biggest source of revenue.

Markets react

Renewed UN sanctions would indirectly reduce oil revenues, constrain access to foreign currency and place heavy pressure on the rial.

A weaker rial would raise import costs and production inputs, driving faster inflation. At the same time, the government might be forced to finance deficits through borrowing and money printing while inflation expectations climb, amplifying price pressures.

Markets are already reacting. The rial has lost more than 7.5% of its value on the Tehran open market in recent days.

According to experts at the Tehran Chamber of Commerce (TCC), factors such as declining currency reserves, limited oil sales, rising inflationary expectations and geopolitical risks are the main drivers of the projected surge in the dollar rate.

In a report released on Wednesday, the TCC outlined Iran’s economic outlook if the snapback mechanism was activated, presenting three scenarios—optimistic, likely, and pessimistic—through the end of 2025.

According to the report, the free-market exchange rate, which stood around 930,000 rials per dollar in August, could climb to 1.65 million under the pessimistic case. Annual inflation, already near 50%, is projected to reach 60–90%, while economic growth would remain negative in all cases, between a loss of 0.6% and 3.1%.

In the optimistic scenario, the rial would reach 1.15 million per dollar, inflation 60%, growth 1.5%, unemployment 10.5%, and the stock market value $120 billion.

Historical experience reinforces the risks: in 2012 and 2013, intensified oil and banking sanctions drove inflation from around 20% to nearly 40%, showing that even small disruptions in currency access can destabilize the economy.

In 2018, following the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal, the rial plunged again, and inflation stabilized at 30-50%.

Ultraconservative denial

Ultraconservative outlets like Tasnim and Fars frame the snapback as a chance to highlight Iran’s resilience. These outlets reflect the so-called “resistance economy” doctrine, claiming that sanctions are largely ineffective and that Iran has already learned how to bypass them.

“Iran’s economy has already endured the main shock of sanctions, and that experience has driven structural changes in oil sales, foreign trade, and even banking mechanisms," an article in the Revolutionary Guards-affiliated Tasnim, said. "As a result, it cannot be assumed that a return of the same sanctions—this time in a more limited form—would replicate the effects of the early 2010s.”

However, the reformist-leaning daily Jahan-e Sanat warned that the Iranian economy's capacity to absorb new shocks has diminished, and even the smallest constraint could upset the fragile balance.