In a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, President Hassan Rouhani voiced doubt that the country would reach an agreement with Europe in the few days left to the second deadline given to them to live up to their commitments to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, officially known as the JCPOA.

The European sides to the JCPOA have been given until September 7 to take effective measures to safeguard Iran’s economic interests, particularly the exports of oil, in the face of US sanctions. Otherwise, Iran would take the third step in scaling down its commitments.

“The third step may not be striking in appearance, but it is of an extremely important nature, and will considerably accelerate the activities of the country’s nuclear energy organization,” Rouhani said, adding “in my opinion, this step is the most important one that we will take, and its impacts will be extraordinarily huge.”

He added that Iran would go ahead and announce its measures to further reduce commitments as the third step in the coming days, seeing as Europe has not made any progress on living up to its own commitments.

“Europe has another two-month deadline for negotiations, agreement, and a return to its commitments,” Rouhani said.

A year after the US’ unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA, and in the face of EU’s lack of practical measures to protect Iran’s economy and trade ties against the US sanctions, Tehran announced its decision to row back on its nuclear commitments in compliance with articles 26 and 36 of the JCPOA.

As the first step, Iran increased its enriched uranium stockpile to beyond the 300 kilograms set by the JCPOA. Next, it announced that it had begun enriching uranium to purity rates beyond the JCPOA-limit of 3.76 percent.

Iran says its reciprocal measures will be reversible as soon as Europe finds practical ways to shield the Iranian economy from unilateral US sanctions.

Referring to his telephone conversations with French President Macron, Rouhani said “In our earlier conversations, there was a huge gap in our communications, but now we understand each other very well. They know what we want and we know what they want, and everything’s clear. In many instances, we have closed the gap between our views, but in some other cases, we still have our differences and we have not reached the final conclusion.”

Rouhani said Iran has set up a five-month framework for its talks with the French side that would last until the year end, adding “France says they will talk to other European countries, as well as China, and the US, and they will make the necessary coordination. Our talks with France is in this regard, as the country represents the EU and the three signatories to the nuclear deal.”

Elsewhere, the president described US hawks, the racist regime of Israel, and some reactionary states in the Middle East region as three groups which do not want the relations between Iran and the US to be “fair” and “right”.

He said the day when relations between Iran and the US became fair and just, it would mean a “permanent death” for the Israeli regime, “because they are like foams on water and will fade away.”

“Every time we wanted to do something, these three groups, which have unfortunately taken over the White House, would not allow it,” Rouhani said, noting that the reason the US pulled out of the JCPOA was because of the influence of these three groups over the White House.