British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Monday that there is still time to save the 2015 Iran nuclear deal negotiated by major world powers, Reuters reported.
“Iran is still a good year away from developing a nuclear bomb. There is still some closing, but small, window to keep the deal alive,” Hunt told reporters after arriving for a foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels.
{mosads}The meeting will include discussions about how to persuade the U.S. and Iran to recommit to the nuclear agreement that promised sanctions relief for Tehran in exchange for curbing its nuclear program.
President Trump pulled out of the internationally negotiated deal with Iran last year and imposed harsh sanctions on the country.
Iran recently scaled back its commitments under the nuclear deal by amassing more low-enriched uranium than the pact permits and beginning to enrich uranium above the threshold agreed to in 2015.
Passing the enrichment threshold has led to warnings from signatories like France, Britain and Germany.
Tehran had given the remaining European signatories a July 7 deadline before taking further steps toward increasing uranium enrichment levels.
When asked about potential punishments for Iran breaking its nuclear commitments, Hunt told reporters that European nations would seek a meeting of the parties to address the matter.
“We will, and there’s something called a joint commission, which is the mechanism set up in the deal which is what happens when one side thinks the other side has breached it, that will happen very soon,” he said, according to Reuters.