Iran Rules Out Interim Deal In Nuclear Talks, Awaits Western Response

Raisi said Western countries thought his government would not continue the nuclear talks and "had nothing [worthy] to say" but "it has now been proven that we [did]. We presented a text [in the new round of talks] and the matter is being pursued," he said.

In the one-hour program, Raisi spoke about the nuclear issue for less than 2 minutes.

The first round of talks after Raisi took office was held from November 29-December 3 and ended without any progress. The United States and European allies voiced dismay and pessimism, saying Iran reneged on all compromises made during earlier rounds oftalks in Vienna.

He added that his government "does not tie the country's budget and economy" to the issue of nuclear talks and is working towards the "lifting of US sanctions" while making every effort to "neutralize [the impact of] sanctions" through establishment of a special taskforce for the purpose.

The interview announced a day earlier was on the occasion of the first 100 days of his presidency, although that was 20 days ago.

The interviewer referred to Iran's full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization(SCO) in September as one of Raisi's foreign policy "achievements" and Raisi himself said he has been very active in foreign policy matters with an emphasis on relations with neighboring and regional countries and held "over 100 meetings and phone calls" with leaders of other countries since taking office.

Biggest achievement

When asked how he himself rated his administration's performance, he spoke about the accelerated pace of Covid-19 vaccination in the past 4 months and blamed the Rouhani government for the slow progress until August. Raisi claimed credit for “over 100 million doses of Covid vaccines" administered in four months, which he said made it possible to reopen “over 100,000 businesses".

Asked why vaccines were not readily available before he took office despite purchase orders having been placed during his predecessor, he said he had contacted officials of other countries personally, ordered the government to provide the cash needed for buying vaccines and supported domestic vaccine developers.

Iran’s vaccination effort until August was slow compared to other countries because Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei banned the purchase of American and British vaccines for political reasons at a time when they were the main products available.

Soon after taking office, in a phone call with the Chinese President Xi Jinping, Raisi urged China to deliver Covid vaccines to Iran urgently. Chinese vaccines make up most of vaccines imported.

The state-controlled TV's interviewer described the government's performance in healthcare including vaccination as "brilliant". Critics of the government have alleged that Raisi's administration has been taking credit for vaccines procured by the previous government.

Critics have said the Islamic Republic officials have lied and bluffed their way during the pandemic.

The riddle of the economy

Regarding the economic crisis people face, Raisi said when he took office reserves of basic commodities were troublingly low but his administration has managed to procure basic foodstuff such as wheat to bring the reserves to an acceptable level.

Raisi said his government is monthly paying 10,000 billion rials ($230 million) on average for purchases made by the previous government. He claimed that his government has succeeded in making all necessary payments without borrowing from the central bank which would cause higher inflation. He said inflation has come under control and the rate of its growth is decreasing.

Iran’s former central bank chairman Abdolnasser Hemmati tweeted Sunday that the government is essentially printing money, since all banks in Iran are affiliated with the state and when the government borrows money from them, the central bank has to print more money.

The president’s critics from all factions say that he has done little in his first months to address multiple crises facing the country, the most important of which is a nuclear agreement to pave the way for lifting of US sanctions. He has been warned that without removing the crippling restrictions, there could be no solution to the huge budget deficit, high inflation and the rapidly falling standards of living.

Bennet is dispatching his top defense and intelligence officials to Washington to discuss the flailing talks.

“I call on every country negotiating with Iran in Vienna to take a strong line and make it clear to Iran that they cannot enrich uranium and negotiate at the same time,” Bennett told a meeting of his Cabinet.

“Iran must begin to pay a price for its violations.”

Buoyed by the failure of negotiators to make any breakthrough in the Vienna talks, chief of Israel’s Mossad and its defense minister visit Washington this week to urge the Biden Administration not to make concessions to Iran.

Prominent voices in Israel are now indicating the US withdrawal, especially without a contingency plan for Iran's continuously developing nuclear plan, was a blunder.

But Israel’s new government has maintained a similar position as former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, rejecting a return to the original deal and calling for diplomacy to be accompanied by military pressure on Iran.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett urged world powers to take a hard line against Iran in negotiations aimed at reviving 2015 nuclear agreement, as his top defense and intelligence officials headed to Washington to discuss the flailing talks.

Israeli officials believe that the US did not expect Iran to come to Vienna with an uncompromising posture and they think the pause in the talks offers a chance for them to put pressure on the Biden Administration to reconsider its approach toward Iran, Haaretz reported.

Haaretz reported that Israeli officials repeated a warning over the weekend that the United States might still be interested in offering sanctions relief to Tehran in exchange for a partial deal.

Mossad chief David Barnea travels to Washington on Sunday to discuss the Iran nuclear negotiations, after the three European signatories of the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) and the US voiced disappointment at the seventh round of talks with Iran in Vienna.

Israel opposed the original deal, arguing that it would not stop Iran to produce nuclear weapons as its limitation are due to mostly end by 2030. Israel also backed former president Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the JCPOA in 2018 and pursue ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions.

With the Biden Administration seemingly eager to restore the agreement, Israel and others believe the outcome would be even worse than the previous deal, without expanding its limitation.

Iran’s new hardline government appears not to be in the mood for any concessions, reneging even on compromises it had made in the first six round of talks from April to June.

Haaretz said that Barnea will try to persuade the Biden Administration to avoid an interim or partial deal if it does not ensure Iran’s return to full compliance with the JCPOA limitations. The most important cap the agreement put on Iran’s nuclear program was its limit on uranium enrichment.

Iran began breaking those limits in 2019 as retaliation against US sanctions and accelerated enrichment even further in early 2021 just as the new US administration announced its readiness to engage in talks to revive the agreement.

On Sunday when the Israeli deputy defense minister Alon Schuster was asked about a loud explosion Saturday night near Iran’s key nuclear site, he said “can’t say” what hit Natanz. He added that Israel is currently trying to bring about a change in the motivations of the whole world through diplomatic means.”

“We have a duty to be brave and responsible for the fate of our children and grandchildren,” he said. “We have used force against our enemies in the past and we are convinced that in extreme situations, there is a need to act using military means.”

Haaretz also said that Barnea’s meetings in Washington will be “extremely significant”. He will tell the Americans that Israel will not consider itself bound by any agreement with Iran. Earlier, Israeli officials had said that if a deal does not permanently block Iran’s path to nuclear weapons, it has to act based on its national security requirements.

Israeli defense minister Benny Gantz will also visit Washington later in the week, with talks expected to focus on Iran.

Reuters reported Saturday that according to an unnamed US official speaking to reporters, Tehran's stance during the first such talks in more than five months disappointed not just the United States and its European allies but also China and Russia, historically supportive of Iran.

While stressing that the United States still wanted to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPO), the official told reporters time was running short.

The indirect US-Iranian talks on saving the deal broke off on Friday in Vienna as European officials also voiced dismay at sweeping demands by Iran's hardline government.

The latest talks were the first with delegates sent by Iran's anti-Western President Ebrahim Raisi, who was elected in June and whose government had said it needed time to prepare for fresh talks after the six rounds between April and June. But Iran delayed its return to the talks and ramped up its uranium enrichment, expanding its stockpile to more than 200 kg of fissile material purified to 20 and 60 percent. This has cut the breakout time for Tehran to weeks instead of months.

The senior US official said Iran used the time to speed up its nuclear program in "provocative" ways and to stonewall the UN nuclear watchdog charged with monitoring its eroding compliance with the deal.

While seeking to leave the door ajar for talks, the official blamed Iran as "the reason why there is not ... a mutual return to compliance" with the original deal.

Tehran, however, has placed the onus on Washington, noting that then-President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018 and reimposed sanctions, prompting Iran to begin violating the nuclear restrictions starting in 2019.

The 2015 agreement imposed strict limits on Iran's uranium enrichment activities, extending the time it would need to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon, if it chose to, to at least a year from around two to three months.

While saying it was unclear whether China and Russia might ramp up economic pressure on Iran if talks fail, he suggested their positions may be evolving.

"They also were quite taken aback by the degree to which Iran had walked back its own compromises and then doubled down on the requests that it (made)," he said. "They do share a sense of disappointment, to put it diplomatically."

The US official said he did not know when the next round of talks would resume - others had said next week - and said the date was less important than Iran's willingness to negotiate.

American officials have said they would consider other options if they cannot revive the deal, a phrase understood to include the possibility of military ones, however remote.

Reporting by Reuters

Western media including British newspaper Guardianhave covered the end of the seventh round of nuclear negotiations saying that the talks "were suspended on Friday, with Europe warning that Iran had walked back on all previous diplomatic progress and fast-forwarded its nuclear programme." But some Iranian media including the IRGC-linked newspaper Javan have described the event as "European and US partners of the JCPOA taking Iran's proposals home with them for consultations in their capitals."

At the same time, other media such as proreform website Fararu have opined that "The nuclear talks are not about Iran's nuclear program. They are about a new, emerging world order as the United States' power is declining." Fararu furthermore quoted British journalist Peter Oborne as saying that the nuclear talks mark the beginning of a new Cold War in which instead of the United States and the Soviet Union, now China and the US are facing each other. Fararu quoted him as saying that this new Cold War started as the US hurriedly withdrew from Afghanistan and turned its focus to Asia.

The administration-owned daily newspaper Iran ran an optimistic front-page headline: "Laying the foundations for lifting the sanctions."

But Kar-o-Kargar daily, close to former Rouhani spokesman Ali Rabiei, ran an utterly pessimistic front-page headline: "The shadow of despair on the negotiating table." While Iran believes that the talks are going to be resumed next week, Kar-o-Kargar said that the talks have come to end for good.

Economic daily Asia took a position in between the two and quoted reformist lawmaker Massouid Pezeshkian as saying that negotiations would be meaningless without "give and take" and suggested that if Iran is looking for a solution to its economic problems, its nuclear negotiators should return to the talks next week.

Foreign policy analyst Ali Bigdeli told Setareh Sobh daily that Iran should withdraw its excessive demands and stick to a minimal request for lifting some of the sanctions.

Another economic daily, Jahan-e Sanat discussed the negotiations with several Iranian experts in a series of debates that were primarily focused on the role of China in the nuclear talks. Observers generally said that China appeared to be silent during this round of the negotiations. Experts told Jahan-e Sanat that the suspension of the talks is in China's interest and that China favors a situation where Iran and the West do not reach an agreement.

Jalal Sadatian, a former Iranian diplomat, told the daily that China is worried about any improvement in Iran's ties with the West. He added that both China and Russia benefit from the sanctions on Iran. Particularly China benefits from being the sole customer for Iran's oil.

Another former diplomat, Fereidoun Majlesi, agreed with Sadatian and said that "thanks to the sanctions, China has now monopolized trade with Iran and is using the situation to sell everything at a higher price while buying Iran's oil at unbelievable discounts."

Asked why Iran counts on China and Russia as its supporters in the nuclear negotiations, Majlesi said: "Iran feels committed to enmity with the United States and this brings it close to China from an ideological standpoint." He further said that Iran is isolated in the international community but likes to say that there are countries such as China that are Iran's allies.

Mohammad Marandi, a member of the Iranian negotiating team as well as some Iranian officials in Tehran said on Friday that that Iran will turn to China if the United States refuses to return to the JCPOA.

Ironically, Iranian journalist and historian Hossein Dehbashi revealed on Twitter on Saturday that Marandi is a US citizen and questioned his support for Iran in the negotiations. Marandi in his response posted a picture on Twitter and claimed the photo shows him in Basij militia uniform when he was 16.