The talks in Vienna continue this week over the Iran Nuclear Deal that was put together in 2015. The big difference now is who makes up the group doing the talking. During the first iteration of agreements, the negotiators were the United States, China, Russia, France, and the UK, plus Germany. They are the fiver permanent members of the UN Security Council with Germany as the add in. Today, they are negotiating in a P4+1 configuration, all of the previous members, minus the US.

So if they are perfectly happy to get together and hammer out agreements, why are they worried about the US at all? Well, it is because of the secondary sanctions that are in place.

This is from an article published in 2018 after the US withdrew from the original Iran deal.

While the US has withdrawn from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — otherwise known as the Iran nuclear deal — which aims to ensure Iran’s peaceful use of nuclear energy, the EU, China, Russia and Iran continue to uphold the agreement. Now the EU wants to circumvent the current US sanctions, which will also punish European companies that do business with Iran.

The EU Commission considers the ‘secondary sanctions’ imposed by the US on European companies illegal. The Americans are seeking to ban European carmakers, banks and energy companies from doing business with Iran. If they violate the ban, their assets in the US may be seized. Even American companies dealing with European companies, which in turn are engaged in Iran, face penalties.

So the reason that the P4+1 and Iran have so much to talk about, is they have to find a way around those secondary sanctions. Another avenue, of course, is to get the Biden Administration to lift those restrictions. This would allow the EU and other nations to trade with Iran and not have to worry about what the evil Americans might do to their assets abroad.

The administration may even be open to doing this because they could claim that they didn’t lift any sanctions on Iran itself. This would effectively remove most of the pressure on Iran and allow them access to the rest of the world.