EU shows increased support for proposed Iran sanctions

European Union member states have begun to show increasing support for Britain, France and Germany's proposed new sanctions on Iran as part of an effort to dissuade the White House from pulling out of the Obama administration's landmark 2015 nuclear deal.

A push by the trio back in March to expedite a proposal to impose new sanctions on fifteen senior Iranian officials, military figures and companies before Donald Trump's 12 May deadline, had rubbed their EU neighbours the wrong way.

Nevertheless, previously US officials had assured their counterparts from the EU that new sanctions could potentially sway the president, who gave Brussels until mid-May to "fix" what he referred to as "the worst deal ever negotiated".

The pressure on EU capitals to protest Iran's role in Syria's civil war had also been ratcheted up by the alleged chemical weapons attack by Syrian government forces near Damascus earlier in the month.

"It's not a 'done deal' but several states have dropped their resistance," one diplomat told Reuters, citing Spain, Austria and Sweden.

Following meetings held in Washington, Luxembourg and Brussels over the past seven days, Britain, France and Germany had resolved to adopt a more measured approach in order to win over the other 25 EU members.

Any decision by the EU needed to be agreed unanimously, so it was agreed to first proceed with a formal study of the potential political and economic impacts of proposed travel bans, asset freezes and more.

That could be followed by a final round of debate among EU envoys in Brussels, with the formal document bringing the measures into effect potentially following as little as a few weeks later.

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were both set to meet Trump in separate state visits to Washington next week with the Iran deal expected to be a focal point of discussions between the leaders.

Italy, which signed a €5bn investment deal with Tehran in January, was opposed to the sanctions given their potential to scupper efforts by the pair to rebuild a business relationship that had once seen Tehran be the second-biggest oil supplier to the EU.