Iran announces nuclear talks with European powers in Istanbul on Friday

Tehran says countries will dispatch deputy FMs to the negotiations, which come as UK, France and Germany threaten ‘snapback’ sanctions

Iran, Britain, France and Germany will hold nuclear talks in Istanbul on Friday, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said early on Monday, following warnings by the three European countries that failure to resume negotiations would lead to international sanctions being reimposed on Iran.

“The meeting between Iran, Britain, France and Germany will take place at the deputy foreign minister level,” Esmaeil Baghaei was quoted by Iranian state media as saying.

The talks scheduled for Friday come after foreign ministers of the E3 nations, as those European countries are known, as well as the European Union’s foreign policy chief, held their first call on Thursday with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi since Israel and the US attacked Iranian nuclear facilities a month ago.

The three European countries, along with China and Russia, are the remaining parties to a 2015 nuclear deal reached with Iran — from which the United States withdrew in 2018 — that lifted sanctions on the Middle Eastern country in return for restrictions on its nuclear program.

The E3 have said they would restore UN sanctions on Tehran via the “snapback mechanism” by the end of August if nuclear talks that were ongoing between Iran and the US before the Israel-Iran air war do not resume or fail to produce concrete results.

“If EU/E3 want to have a role, they should act responsibly, and put aside the worn-out policies of threat and pressure, including the ‘snap-back’ for which they lack absolutely [any] moral and legal ground,” Araghchi said earlier in the week.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi at the BRICS summit second plenary session in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on July 6, 2025. (Pablo Porciuncula/AFP)

The snapback mechanism can be used to restore UN sanctions before the UN Security Council resolution enshrining the deal expires on October 18.

Prior to the recent conflict between Israel and Iran, Tehran and Washington held five rounds of nuclear talks beginning in April and mediated by Oman. But they faced major stumbling blocks such as a disagreement over uranium enrichment in Iran, which Western powers want to bring down to zero to minimize any risk of weaponization.

Tehran maintains its nuclear program is solely meant for civilian purposes. However, it enriched uranium to levels that have no peaceful application, obstructed international inspectors from checking its nuclear facilities and expanded its ballistic missile capabilities. Israel said Iran had recently taken significant steps toward nuclear weaponization.