Reuters

France is ready to impose further sanctions against Iran if no progress is made in talks over ballistic missile program, the French foreign minister said on Friday.

“We are ready, if the talks don’t yield results, to apply sanctions firmly, and they know it,” Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters.

Diplomats previously told Reuters in private that France, Britain and other EU countries were considering new economic sanctions against Tehran.

Those could include asset freezes and travel bans on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Iranians developing the Islamic Republic’s ballistic missile program, three diplomats said.

The US had restored sanctions targeting Iran’s oil, banking and transportation sectors and threatened more action to stop its “outlaw” policies last November. The sanctions had been lifted under the Iranian nuclear deal in 2015.