Bipartisan Views In Iran Suggest No Way Out Of Diplomatic Impasse

Speaking at a regular press briefing, foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said the US should return to Vienna talks with a "simultaneous and effective lifting of all sanctions" and a "proper implementation plan…[abandon] its previous policy of maintain[ing] parts of the Trump sanctions against Iran, and… [stop] wasting Iran and the 4+1 countries' time and energy with inconsistent arguments to keep parts of the sanctions."

Talks in Vienna over reviving the 2015 deal – the JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – began in April, but Iran suspended its participation in June. The US took part indirectly in formal talks between the five remaining JCPOA members, China, France, Germany, Iran, Russia, and the United Kingdom.

The ‘4+1’ refers to four permanent members of the United National security council plus Germany, as the original ‘P5+1’ fragmented when the US in 2018 left the JCPOA – signed between Iran and the ‘P5+1’ – before imposing ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions.

The US has said it will lift only sanctions specifically related to the JCPOA, but Iran has argued that sanctions levied by the Trump administration ostensibly on ‘non-nuclear’ grounds were deliberately and openly designed to wreck prospects for reviving the agreement. But some of these sanctions are related to concrete and important matters, such as Iran’s support for militant groups and human rights violations.

There have also been reports that the US has sought additional conditions, including an Iranian commitment to a ‘follow-on’ agreement over defense and security. Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said Sunday Russia insisted on the revival of the original agreementwith no such add-ons.

Waiting for US action

"We are waiting for Washington to take action," Khatibzadeh said. Stressing Iran’s commitment to the JCPOA multilateral forum, the spokesman said that Iran had not held any "direct or indirect talks" with the US since shortly after Washington left the deal in 2018. He insisted that no talks "in any shape or format" would take place while the US continues sanctions that included punitive actions against third parties, including US allies, trading with Iran.

“The imposition of new sanctions exposes the quite contradictory behavior of the White House,” Khatibzadeh said in reference to Washington's most recent sanctions, related to Iran's drone program.

US President Joe Biden said Sunday the US would “respond to their actions against interests of the US,” referring to the use of what Washington said was an Iranian-made drone in the October 20 attack by militia on US troops in Syria.

Drones are regularly used by Iranian proxies, including Hezbollah and Ansar Allah in Yemen.

Welcoming US goodwill

Reiterating that Iran will finalize a date for resumption of talks in Vienna this week "after conferring with all parties involved including China", Khatibzadeh said Iran welcomed the recent message of US "goodwill" in an E3 statement issued Sunday by Germany, France and the UK Sunday after meetings on the margins of the G20 summit in Rome.

"We hope that what has been referred to as goodwill of the other parties in the statement happens," Khatibzadeh said.

The E3 statement referred explicitly to Iranian concerns, shared by other JCPOA signatories, that the US might again abandon the agreement. The E3 welcomed a commitment from Biden to “to stay in full compliance, so long as Iran does the same.”

While the official news agency (IRNA) highlighted Khatibzadeh's remarks about "Iran awaiting practical action from US" in its headline, the English website of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC)-affiliated Fars news agency chose "Talks between Iran, US Inconceivable until Removal of Sanctions."

Principlist media was quick to downplay any advantages in the US returning to its JCPOA commitments. In a commentary Monday, Javan newspaper wrote Monday said whether the US did or did not return to the JCPOA had no attraction or relevance for Iran and enumerated conditions Iran required for continuing the Vienna talks.

‘Deceptive’ American terms

"Iran's evident wish is implementation of the JCPOA, precisely and without preconditions and full and simultaneous lifting (not suspension or any other deceptive American term) of unjust US and European sanctions," Javan wrote.

Javan also added that Iran would accept the nuclear limits set by the JCPOA, which it has breached since 2019, once it received "precise, valid and acceptable guarantees that the West will not reimpose sanctions under any other pretext and that there was "logical verification for at least six months" that sanctions had been lifted as required.

The newspaper also suggested the UN Security Council guaranteed to sanction the US and Europe if they again failed to uphold the JCPOA, which the council endorsed in 2015.

But the top US diplomat added it was unclear if Tehran was willing to rejoin the talks in a "meaningful way."

Iran stopped participation in multilateral talks in Vienna in June, refusing to announce an exact date for their its return.

Blinken's remarks in an interview with CNN on Sunday come a day after the United States, Germany, France and Britain urged Iran to resume compliance with a 2015 nuclear deal in order to "avoid a dangerous escalation."

The accord, under which Iran curtailed nuclear work seen as a risk of developing nuclear weapons in exchange for a lifting of global sanctions, unraveled in 2018 after then-President Donald Trump withdrew the United States, prompting Tehran to breach limits on uranium enrichment set by the pact.

"It really depends on whether Iran is serious about doing that," Blinken said about Iran rejoining the nuclear talks. "All of our countries, working by the way with Russia and China, believe strongly that that would be the best path forward", he added.

Leaders of the four countries hoping to persuade Tehran to stop enriching uranium to near-weapons-grade levels, said on Saturday they wanted a negotiated solution. Iran is enriching uranium to 20 and 60 percent purity, which has no civilian use. The process reduces the time Tehran would need to develop a nuclear device.

"But we do not yet know whether Iran is willing to come back to engage in a meaningful way," Blinken said on Sunday. "But if it isn't, if it won't, then we are looking together at all of the options necessary to deal with this problem."

Iran's foreign minister said separately on Sunday that if the United States was serious about rejoining Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, President Joe Biden could just issue an "executive order," the state-owned Iran newspaper reported.

"It is enough for Biden to issue an executive order tomorrow and they (U.S.) announce they are rejoining the pact from the point where his predecessor left the deal," Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said. "If there is a serious will in Washington to return to the deal, there is no need for all these negotiations at all."

But this fails to take into consideration the different current circumstances including the complexity of the sanctions and the reversal of gains Iran has made in its nuclear program since 2018.

Talks between Iran and world powers aimed at salvaging the deal, which started in April, are slated to resume at the end of November, the Islamic Republic's top nuclear negotiator said on Wednesday.

With reporting by Reuters

In an exclusive interview published Sunday by the government mouthpiece, Iran newspaper, the top Iranian diplomat said Tehran expects the US to return to the time before Trump sanctions began, if the President Joe Biden seriously wishes to revive the agreement that his predecessor abandoned. Iran will also return to the same point in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), he said.

Amir-Abdollahian insisted that there is no need for so much negotiation and a "simpler solution" to revive the JCPOA would be if Biden issues an executive order and return to where things were in May 2018.

"We hear [about the US] will and intention [to do so] in their messages but we don't see it in their actions," he said while reiterating that the US should release $10 billion of Iran's frozen funds to prove its "good will", because Iran is very distrustful of their intentions.

A return to 2018 for Iran would mean the lifting of "all Trump sanctions" many of which are not directly or even indirectly related to Iran's nuclear activities. Iran will in return set its nuclear program to the same pace and form as it was in 2018, Iranian officials say. But this fails to take into consideration the different current circumstances including the complexity of the sanctions and the reversal of gains Iran has made in its nuclear program since 2018.

The JCPOA put a 3.65-percent enrichment cap on Iran but since the US withdrawal from the pact, Iran has installed advanced, more powerful centrifuges such allowing it to reach faster and much higher levels of enrichment and has stockpiled 20-percent and 60-percent enriched fissile material that has no civilian use. Iran may retire its advanced centrifuges and give up its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, but it gets to keep the know-how and experience gained in the process.

Arguing that Iran has gained nothing from the JCPOA, including the lifting of UN sanctions in the years following its conclusion, the top Iranian diplomat alleged that former US president Barack Obama was the first one to violate the nuclear deal and that more violations followed by Trump who withdrew from the agreement. He did not specify what had Obama violated.

Iran could say that six UN resolutions against the country had been lifted with a settlement that six other parties to the JCPOA also agreed on and that the issue of sanctions was solved, "if it had benefitted from the agreement", he said, adding: "There is now a thick document in several hundred pages called the JCPOA which has made things even harder for Iran than the six UN resolutions [that it lifted]," he said.

Iran has also insisted that the US gives assurances not to leave the deal if Tehran abides by its commitments. According to a joint statement issued Saturday by Germany, France and the UK Sunday after a meeting on the margins of the G20 in Rome attended by Biden, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson, the US president has agreed to return to JCPOA and stay in the deal. “We welcome President Biden’s clearly demonstrated commitment to return the US to full compliance with the JCPOA [joint comprehensive plan of action] and to stay in full compliance, so long as Iran does the same,” the statement said.

But this is a verbal agreement not a ratified treaty and Iran might not satisfied that a future US government would not once again withdraw from the agreement. Once issue with JCPOA, experts have said, is the fact that Obama avoided presenting it for ratification, which made it easier for Trump to abandon the deal.

In his interview with Iran newspaper, Amir-Abdollahian also rejected “excessive demands” by the US and some European countries to include regional issues in negotiations with Iran. "We have no plans to hold talks with them on regional issues,” he said, insisting that talks will be limited to the nuclear issue and the JCPOA.

A joint statement issued after meetings at the G20 summit in Romesaid Iran had “accelerated the pace of provocative nuclear steps.”

President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson charged that Tehran had “halted negotiations” in Vienna on a return to the nuclear deal – the JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The talks been suspended since June, first for Iran’s new administration to assess options and then Tehran’s unwillingness to resume negotiations.

The statement said Iran’s nuclear steps had been “made more alarming” because it had “simultaneously decreased cooperation and transparency with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).” Both the “nuclear advances” and “obstacles” to the IAEA’s work threatened to “jeopardize the possibility of a return to the JCPOA.”

Since Biden took office in January with a commitment to return to the JCPOA, which previous president Donald Trump left in 2018, he has looked to improve relations with the three European JCPOA signatories – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

The so-called ‘E3,’ like the other signatories China and Russia, have stressed the need both for the US to return to the agreement by lifting the ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions imposed by Trump and for Iran to reverse a series of steps taken since 2019 in expanding its nuclear program beyond JCPOA limits.

Both Biden’s outreach to Europe and the accelerated pace of Iran’s nuclear program have brought the US and Europe closer.

The US-E3 statement also expressed commitment to “continuing to work closely” with Russia and China, who have stressed the US responsibility, as the party that left the JCPOA, to ensure the success of the Vienna talks.

While diplomats in Vienna said the talks made significant progress, the greatest challenges lay in agreeing which US sanctions were incompatible with the JCPOA and exactly how Iran’s developed program should be incorporated within JCPOA limits, including its use of more advanced centrifuges.

Reduced risk of a nuclear crisis

Saturday’s statement highlighted Iran’s production of highly enriched uranium and enriched uranium metal. “Iran has no credible civilian need for either measure,” the statement said.

Tehran began enriching to 20 percent in January, and reduced IAEA access, following last November’s assassination of scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, and began enriching to 60 percent in April after sabotage at its Natanz enrichment site. Iran is barred under the JCPOA from enriching above 3.67 percent and until from producing uranium metal, used in fuel plates for the Tehran Research Reactor.

The US-E3 statement also referred to “our Gulf partners’ regional diplomatic efforts to deescalate tensions,” an apparent reference to Iraq-brokered meetings between Iran and Saudi Arabia reportedly discussing the restoration of diplomatic relations and ending the war in Yemen. The statement suggested that a “return to the JCPOA” and the resulting easing of sanctions would allow “for enhanced regional partnerships and a reduced risk of a nuclear crisis that would derail regional diplomacy.”

At the same time, acknowledging Saudi concerns over Iran’s regional influence, the statement affirmed “our shared determination to address broader security concerns raised by Iran’s actions in the region.” Both Saudi Arabia and Israel opposed the JCPOA and have been adjusting both to the Biden administration’s commitment to revive the deal and its desire to reduce the US military presence in the region.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Joe Biden met on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Rome to discuss the next steps on Iran's nuclear program.

The four posed for a group photo before they went behind closed doors for their consultations.

Biden's meeting with the leaders of Germany, France, and Britain - known as the E3 - comes at a pivotal time, as Iran continues to enrich uranium to near-weapons-grade levels.

Biden is trying to revive the 2015 nuclear deal and bring Iran back into compliance with the pact that would have kept the Islamic republic at least one year away from the potential to field a nuclear weapon.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the meeting would feature the leaders “all singing from the same song sheet on this issue.”

Amidst tense relations between France and Britain over post-Brexit fishing rights, Johnson and Macron walked away from the photo with arms around each other.

Report by AP