The UK's Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt is visiting Tehran this week to discuss, among other things, the nuclear deal that Iran agreed to sign with six world powers back in 2015, which President Trump pulled out of in May this year.
Reuters reports, citing Iranian media, that Hunt will meet with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, as well as the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, an ally of Iran's Supreme Ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The visit, a first since Hunt took office, comes two weeks after U.S. sanctions against Tehran snapped back, with President Trump repeatedly saying he was unhappy with the 2015 deal and demanding that Iran curbed its missile development program and stopped its involvement in Middle East conflicts, notably the Syrian war.
The European signatories of the deal-the UK, France, and Germany-have been actively trying to find ways to make sure Iran sticks to the agreement, doubling down on these efforts after Tehran threatened to revive its nuclear program after the United States' exit if the European Union signatories failed to find a way to continue buying Iranian crude oil after the U.S. sanctions returned.
The other two signatories to the deal, Russia and China, have already made it clear that they will continue to support their ally in the Middle East, including by buying its crude and helping Tehran find ways to sell the commodity abroad, circumventing the sanctions.
"The Iran nuclear deal remains a vital component of stability in the Middle East by eliminating the threat of a nuclearised Iran. It needs 100 percent compliance though to survive," Jeremy Hunt said in a statement before his departure for Tehran.
"We will stick to our side of the bargain as long as Iran does. But we also need to see an end to destabilising activity by Iran in the rest of the region if we are going to tackle the root causes of the challenges the region faces," he also said in the statement.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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Irina is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry. More