The three European countries in the Iran nuclear deal — France, Germany and the UK — announced Jan. 14 that they were triggering a dispute mechanism under the accord in response to Iran's failure to "meet its commitments," a move that could potentially push the already fragile deal to the edge of collapse. 

In May, Iran kick-started a phased rollback of its commitments in the multilateral deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The plan, Iran said, was an effort to save the deal rather than kill it, and a push for the European signatories to honor their side of the agreement by granting Tehran the economic relief it expected from the JCPOA after US President Donald Trump walked out of it in 2018. In the "fifth and last step" of those breaches, Iran broke entirely free from all the caps on its nuclear program, which had been severely restricted by the pact. Tehran, however, insisted that an almost immediate full compliance was possible any moment tangible measures were adopted by the other parties.

According to the JCPOA, the dispute mechanism requires Iran to resolve the outstanding issues during meetings at a joint commission and if needed at ministerial levels. Failure to come to terms would consequently prompt a "snapback" process. In the JCPOA's terminology, that refers to a reimposition of UN Security Council sanctions that Tehran had managed to get lifted in the marathon talks that culminated in the deal.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, one of the key architects of the accord, told the Raisina 2020 Summit in New Delhi on Jan. 15 that the fate of the JCPOA "depends on the E3 countries, not Iran." The E3 are France, Germany and the UK.