The Japan Times - France, US tell Iran still chance to avoid nuclear sanctions

France, Britain and Germany have set the clock through the UN Security Council to reimpose sweeping sanctions at the end of Saturday on Iran, which they say has not cooperated on the long-running nuclear row.

Macron met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly and urged him to reverse a series of steps taken by Tehran following an Israeli and US attack in June.

Iran must allow full access to UN nuclear inspectors, immediately resume nuclear negotiations and offer transparency on highly enriched uranium whose whereabouts have been the subject of speculation, Macron said.

"An agreement remains possible. Only a few hours are left. It's up to Iran to respond to the legitimate conditions we have raised," Macron wrote on X after meeting Pezeshkian.

Steve Witkoff, Trump's real-estate friend and roving envoy who had been negotiating with Iran until Israel attacked, said without further elaboration that he was still in touch with Iran.

Witkoff said that Iran was in a "tough position" ahead of the return of the so-called snapback sanctions.

"I think that we have no desire to hurt them. We have a desire, however, to either realize a permanent solution and negotiate around snapbacks," Witkoff told the Concordia summit on the sidelines of the General Assembly.

"If we can't, then snapbacks will be what they are. They're the right medicine," Witkoff said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met Tuesday with his European counterparts, leading to no clear progress other than an agreement to keep talking.

- Iran denies bomb pursuit -

Ahead of meeting Macron, Pezeshkian insisted before the annual UN gathering that Iran was not at fault.

"I hereby declare once more before this assembly that Iran has never sought and will never seek to build a nuclear bomb," he said.

"The one disturbing peace and stability in the region is Israel, but Iran is the one that gets punished," he said.

Iran has long contended that it is not seeking nuclear weapons, pointing to an edict by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and US intelligence has not concluded that the country has decided to build a nuclear weapon.

But Israel, the United States and European countries have long been skeptical due to the country's advanced nuclear work, believing it could quickly pursue a bomb if it so decided.

The snapback sanctions would restore wide-ranging UN economic measures that had been suspended under a 2015 nuclear deal that was negotiated by former US president Barack Obama.

Trump withdrew from the deal in his first term and imposed major unilateral US sanctions.

Pezeshkian accused the Europeans of bad faith, saying that Iran's lack of cooperation was in response to Trump's withdrawal from the nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

"They falsely presented themselves as parties of good standing to the agreement, and they disparaged Iran's sincere efforts as insufficient," Pezeshkian said.

"All of this was in pursuit of nothing less than the destruction of the very JCPOA which they themselves had once held as a foremost achievement."

Standing at the General Assembly rostrum, Pezeshkian showed pictures of people killed in the 12-day Israeli military campaign against Iran in June, which Tehran says killed more than 1,000 people.

The United States joined in the campaign on June 22, striking several of Iran's nuclear facilities.

"Aerial assaults of the Zionist regime and the United States of America against Iran's cities, homes and infrastructure at the very time we were treading the path of diplomatic negotiations constituted a grave betrayal of diplomacy," he said.

T.Shimizu--JT