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Europe has found a way of circumventing U.S. sanctions on Iran. The governments of France, Germany and the United Kingdom have developed a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to enable European businesses to maintain non-dollar trade with Iran without breaking U.S. sanctions. That SPV, known as INSTEX, is now up and running.

The three governments announced the successful implementation of INSTEX at a meeting of the Joint Commission of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on June 28, 2019. The meeting was chaired on behalf of the EU by the Secretary General of the European External Action Service (EEAS), Helga Schmid, and was attended by representatives of China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and Iran.

In a statement, Schmid said:

France, Germany and the United Kingdom informed participants that INSTEX had been made operational and available to all EU Member States and that the first transactions are being processed. Ongoing complementary cooperation with the Iranian corresponding entity (STFI), which has already been established, will speed up. They confirmed that some EU Member States were in the process of joining INSTEX as shareholders, the special purpose vehicle aimed at facilitating legitimate business with Iran. They are also working to open INSTEX to economic operators from third countries.

JPCOA is better known as the “Iran nuclear deal.” The U.S. unilaterally withdrew from JPCOA in May 2018, when it reimposed sanctions on Iran’s oil export sector. But other countries, including EU member states, have so far declined to follow suit. They claim that Iran is complying with the terms of the deal, and the U.S.’s decision to reimpose sanctions was unjustified.

When the U.S. withdrew from JPCOA, it said that companies breaking the reimposed sanctions would face stiff penalties. Among the companies the U.S. administration listed as potential sanctions-breakers was the Brussels-based international messaging service SWIFT, which is the lifeblood of international payments. In November, evidently concerned about the potential consequences for global payments if the U.S. retaliated against it, SWIFT announced that it would comply with U.S. sanctions:

In keeping with our mission of supporting the resilience and integrity of the global financial system as a global and neutral service provider, Swift is suspending certain Iranian banks’ access to the messaging system. This step, while regrettable, has been taken in the interest of the stability and integrity of the wider global financial system.

This was widely seen as a setback for the EU, which had been hoping that SWIFT would defy the U.S. and maintain payment services to Iran. But European governments were still determined to find a way of keeping trade with Iran going. If SWIFT wouldn’t help, they would create something to replace SWIFT for Iranian trade. Thus, INSTEX was born.