Iran said it would move farther to withdraw from the nuclear deal unless Europe, Russia and China protected its banks and trade.
BRUSSELS — As the divide widens between the United States and Iran over the 2015 nuclear deal, the European Union finds itself trapped between them, with no easy or quick way to respond to its dilemma.
President Trump pulled out of the deal, which the European Union championed and which three key European allies of the United States — Britain, Germany and France — all continue to support. The United States has reinstated punishing sanctions intended to disrupt Iranian oil exports and trade.
The Europeans have been trying, without much success, to come up with a way to compensate for the American sanctions and protect trade with Iran, mollifying Tehran and salvaging the agreement’s limits on the Iranian nuclear program.
But on Wednesday, President Hassan Rouhani said Iran would scale back some of its commitments to the deal. In a carefully calibrated speech, he said Iran would retain its enriched uranium and heavy water rather than selling them to other nations while remaining, for now, within the limits prescribed in the nuclear deal.
But Mr. Rouhani warned that Iran could resume high-level uranium enrichment if the remaining signatories — Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia — did not make good, in the next 60 days, on promises to shield its oil and banking sectors from American penalties. He also hinted that Iran could do less to block migrants and drugs from entering Europe.
There was little immediate response from European leaders to Mr. Rouhani’s statement on Wednesday. But they have sharply criticized American actions, which many consider aimed at overthrowing the Iranian government, despite denials from Washington.
The Europeans have been working on a limited way around American sanctions that would allow European companies to do a kind of barter trade with Iran without using the dollar or ordinary banks. Set up by Germany, Britain and France, the mechanism, called Instex, or “Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges,” is in its initial stages, and relied on Iran setting up a similar system, which happened only at the end of April.
