TEHRAN - Kamal Kharrazi, head of Iran’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, said on Saturday that a failure of the 2015 nuclear deal, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, will discredit Europe.

“Definitely, it would not have been possible to reach the nuclear deal without Europe’s cooperation. In fact, failure of this agreement will discredit Europe,” Kharrazi, the former foreign minister in the Khatami administration, said during a speech at a conference in Vienna.

He noted that the Europeans’ move in designing mechanisms to save the JCPOA should be viewed as a “strategic and security approach” whose failure will cause many problems.

According to Bloomberg, the European Union announced on November 7 that work “has accelerated” on a so-called special purpose vehicle (SPV) to help avoid the U.S. administration’s reimposed sanctions on Iran.

“The work on setting up the SPV, or special purpose vehicle, is continuing and it has actually accelerated,” Maja Kocijancic, EU spokeswoman for foreign affairs, told reporters in Brussels without elaborating. 

The bloc is seeking to use the SPV to help maintain the economic benefits promised in the 2015 nuclear deal flowing to Iran.

France, Germany, Britain and the European Union issued a joint statement on November 2 condemning the U.S. move in reimposing sanctions on Iran and vowed to protect European companies doing “legitimate” business with Tehran.

The statement read that Europe will also seek to “maintain financial channels operational with Iran and to ensure the continuation of Iranian oil and gas exports”.

NA/PA