The proposal is not to seek more UN sanctions, which is not considered politically possible at the moment.
The talks will apparently involve Germany, France, Britain and the United States, although no formal announcement has been made.
There appears to be agreement among them on a need to tighten the screws on Iran. The question is how best to do that.
One possibility is to draft new sanctions involving more sectors of the Iranian economy.
Another option is to lean on more countries to better enforce the existing UN sanctions.
A third possibility is to lobby for more countries to adopt the tougher EU sanctions.
There is also a possibility that that all three approaches will be adopted.
So far, 34 countries have adopted sanctions that are tougher than the UN sanctions. The United States has the toughest sanctions. The 27 EU member states adopted sanctions in between the UN and US standards. Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Norway and Switzerland have adopted sanctions similar to the EU sanctions.
The talk of tougher sanctions is a direct result of the talks between Iran and the Big Six powers last month in Turkey. Those talks went nowhere as Iran used them to unveil new demands it was making of the Big Six before it would agree to discuss its nuclear program.
Meanwhile, the United States imposed sanctions on more Iranian businesses and individuals last week. It was the third list of such sanctions targets to be released so far this year.
