TEHRAN - Mohammad Javad Jamali Nobandegani, a former MP, has said that Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis’ visit to Iran shows that the European countries are seeking to have more active diplomacy with Iran.

The Europeans have come to the conclusion that the United States’ pressure on Iran has had no tangible result and therefore should play a more active role in diplomacy, he told IRNA in an interview published on Tuesday.

He also said the Europeans failed to fulfil their commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA, after the United States withdrew from the agreement and imposed sanctions on Iran.

Europe has just talked about keeping the JCPOA without taking practical actions, the former MP said.

Pointing to INSTEX (the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges), Nobandegani said that the mechanism was the least the Europeans had to do, however, it did not yield any result.

INSTEX has been designed to facilitate legitimate trade with Tehran. It was introduced on January 31, 2019, by France, Germany, and Britain, the three European countries party to the nuclear deal.

INSTEX was supposed to be a financial channel and a special mechanism for transferring money in spite of U.S. sanctions on Iran. Its objective was to facilitate Iran’s transactions with European companies.

In late November 2019, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden issued a joint statement announcing becoming shareholders of INSTEX.

“In light of the continuous European support for the agreement and the ongoing efforts to implement the economic part of it and to facilitate legitimate trade between Europe and Iran, we are now in the process of becoming shareholders of the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX) subject to completion of national procedures. INSTEX was established by France, Germany, and the United Kingdom in January 2019,” read the statement, published by the Foreign Ministry of Finland.

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called INSTEX a “silly game”.

Through INSTEX, the Leader said, Europeans made the Iranian economy “conditional”.

NA/PA