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EU leaders have distanced themselves from a call by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz for the bloc to ease sanctions on Iran as part of a ceasefire deal.
Merz indicated that the EU was willing to gradually ease sanctions on Iran if a comprehensive agreement was reached.
"Easing sanctions can be part of a process. It is, so to speak, part of the contribution we can make to moving this process forward and, hopefully, leading to a sustainable ceasefire," Merz said after talks with EU leaders in Cyprus.
But EU leaders said such action was premature. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters that easing sanctions should be conditional on verification of de-escalation, but also a change in the repression of Iran's own people.
"This was the reason why we adopted the sanctions regime in the first place, the behavior of the regime. We must not forget that 17,000 young people have been killed in the first month of this year. So the reason for this must disappear before we talk about lifting the sanctions," Von der Leyen said.
The difference in tone was striking since von der Leyen, like Merz, is a German Christian Democrat, although she does not represent her country on the commission. Other groups outside Iran have estimated that as many as 33,000 or more people were killed in the regime's latest crackdown, before the US-Israeli airstrikes.
The EU currently has 263 senior Iranians and 53 organizations on its blacklist, including Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, morality police, news agencies and prisons, under sanctions. It also imposes a ban on the sale of equipment or finance that could be used by Iranian authorities to repress their people.
The EU also enforces broad UN economic and financial sanctions on Iran, which aim to curb the regime's nuclear program.
European Council President António Costa said it was "too early" to talk about lifting sanctions, adding that "we do not have a good experience with Iran." He said the Iranian regime had failed to convince the international community that it would not develop a nuclear weapon.
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