Op-Ed / Middle East & North Africa 17 May 2019 1 minute Europe Tests the Boundaries on Iran A New Trade Vehicle Could Preserve the Nuclear Deal’s Core Bargain Share Facebook Twitter Email Linkedin Whatsapp Save Print On January 31, 2019, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom announced their most substantive move yet to save the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, to which they are signatories, from collapse. With the European Union’s blessing, the three states established a special channel that shields trade with Iran from U.S. sanctions. The Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges, or INSTEX, as the channel is called, holds out the possibility that Europe can yet salvage the nuclear agreement’s core bargain: that Iran was to limit its nuclear activities in return for the normalization of economic relations. The preservation of this arrangement will depend not only on the modicum of European-Iranian trade that INSTEX might help preserve but on whether Europe can navigate a narrow path between what Iran expects and what the United States can tolerate. Continue reading in Foreign Affairs Related Tags Contributors Naysan Rafati Senior Analyst, Iran Ali Vaez Senior Adviser to the President & Project Director, Iran AliVaez More for you Event Recording / Middle East & North Africa Avoiding All-out War in the Middle East Op-Ed / Middle East & North Africa The U.S. Can Do More to Prevent an Israel-Iran War Originally published in Foreign Policy