Key US Sanctions Expert Leaves Negotiating Team In Vienna
Richard Nephew, who is known as the architect of Washington’s sanctions on Iran, has left the US negotiating team in Vienna over differences with chief US negotiator Robert Malley.
Richard Nephew, who is known as the architect of Washington’s sanctions on Iran, has left the US negotiating team in Vienna over differences with chief US negotiator Robert Malley.
The report cited two people familiar with the matter as the source of the news but did not elaborate on the disagreement.
“Richard Nephew made important contributions to the team, where he served for nearly a year. He remains with the Department of State”, a State Department official said in a statement.
Back in March 2021, when Nephew was appointed as Malley’s deputy, some Iranian officials described it as proof of the Biden administration's “maliciousness.”
Iranian lawmaker Ahmad Naderi had said appointing the “architect of the oppressive sanctions” show that “Americans' hatred of Iran is not limited to Republicans or Democrats".
Iranian newspaper Vatan-e Emrooz had covered the news on its front page, depicting Nephew as Keanu Reeves from the movie The Devil's Advocate, with Biden replacing Al Pacino, who played the Devil.
Nephew, who is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, published a book about the sanctions in 2017, titled The Art of Sanctions: A View from the Field.
Iran has rejected a Russia-proposed ‘interim’ deal that would have given limited sanctions relief in return for some nuclear curbs, US officials have told NBC News.
According to NBC, several United States officials including a Congressional official, a former official and four other people familiar with the Iran nuclear case said Washington was aware of Moscow’s suggestion to Tehran.
An interim deal would been a partial step towards restoring the 2015 agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), which imposed strict curbs on the Iranian nuclear program and which the US left in 2018.
One person familiar with the Russian proposal described it as “an interim step towards a full return to compliance” with the JCPOA: “It’s not a substitute…it’s not a new agreement. It’s an understanding to go part of the way there.”
A statement from Iran's Permanent Mission to the United Nations Friday appeared to rule out such a step. “Iran seeks a reliable but also durable agreement that is consistent with the promises [over lifting sanctions] made in the JCPOA, and any agreement that does not meet these two criteria is not on the agenda for us,” it read. The statement reiterated Tehran’s refusal talk directly with Washington until the US returned to the JCPOA.
NBC's sources said Russia had discussed a draft with Tehran in recent weeks under which Iran would stop uranium enrichment to 60 percent, which it began last year, and dispose of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. In return, the US would ‘allow’ Iran access to assets frozen in South Korea, Japan, and Iraq by third parties wary of US punitive action under Washington’s ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions targeting Iran’s oil sales and financial sector.
Russia has played an active role in the Vienna talks since they resumed November, with its representative Mikhail Ulyanov regularly reporting meetings with the US special representative for Iran, Robert Malley. Russian president Vladimir Putin told reporters Wednesday, before a three-hour meeting with Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi (Raeesi) in Moscow, that he was eager to hear Raisi’s take on the Vienna talks.
Extracting leverage
But a senior official in the administration of US President Joe Biden told NBC that an interim “arrangement” was not under serious discussion. Some US lawmakers have expressed concern at the possibility that this would not return the Iran nuclear program to JCPOA limits.
More than 100 Republican members of Congress wrote recently to Biden urging him to withdraw from any negotiations over the JCPOA. Opponents of the JCPOA have also suggested that any settlement other than the 2015 agreement should be reviewed by Congress.
Some principlists in Tehran, who generally opposed the JCPOA, also reject any notion of interim arrangements and argue that Iran can extract leverage from its uranium stockpiles and use of more advanced centrifuges barred by the JCPOA.
The idea of an interim agreement came first from a European state, a source told Axios in November, with the idea focused on releasing Iranian money frozen in Asia. The Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) in a report November 13 said Iran's assets frozen abroad totaled $50 billion, including $8 billion in South Korea, $3 billion in Japan, and $6 billion in Iraq.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday he discussed Iran with his Russian counterpart, warning there was only a brief window to succeed in Vienna talks.
Blinken told reporters the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) was an example of how Moscow and Washington can work together on security issues, urging Russia to use the influence it has and its relationship with Iran to impress upon Tehran the sense of urgency.
Blinken said there was still a window to return to the deal - which has unraveled since 2018 when then-US President Donald Trump abandoned it - but warned that Tehran's continuing nuclear advances would foil any return to the accord if a fresh pact was not reached in coming weeks.
"The talks with Iran about a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA (2015 deal) have reached a decisive moment," Blinken said.
"If a deal is not reached in the next few weeks, Iran's ongoing nuclear advances will make it impossible to return to the JCPOA. But right now, there's still a window, a brief one, to bring those talks to a successful conclusion and address the remaining concerns of all sides."
The US and its European allies said on Thursday it was now just a matter of weeks to salvage the deal after the latest round of talks in which a French diplomatic source said there had been no progress on the core issues.
Report by Reuters
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says nuclear talks with Iran are at a decisive moment but there is not much time left until Washington and its allies change tactics.
Blinken made the remarks in Berlin on Thursday after meeting senior diplomats from Germany, France, and Britain, stating that modest progress has been made during the ongoing round of talks in Vienna to revive the 2015 nuclear accord.
Blinken said, “We are indeed at a decisive moment, but we are not where we need to be. And if we don’t get there very soon, we will have to take a different course”.
"My own assessment, talking to all of our colleagues, is that returning to mutual compliance remains possible," he added, warning that "There is real urgency and it's really now a matter of weeks, where we determine whether or not we can return to mutual compliance with the agreement."
The United States has been warning since early December that time is running out and only weeks remain to reach a point where the JCPOA agreement would lose its utility as a non-proliferation instrument.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock echoed Blinken’s comments, saying, “Our objective is to maintain and to preserve the agreement and above all, to make Iran see sense and to ensure that Iran can no further increase its enrichment capacity”.
She underlined that “the window for finding a solution is closing. The negotiations are in a decisive phase. We need urgent, urgent progress, otherwise we will not be successful in reaching a joint accord."
Referring to Iran’s enrichment of uranium at 60-percent purity, Baerbock said that "there is no plausible explanation for this and Iran is not providing a plausible explanation for this".
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian reiterated complaints about the "partial, timid and slow" progress in talks, saying that "the negotiations cannot go on so slowly".
President Joe Biden on Wednesday dismissed abandoning the talks and insisted there is some progress. “It’s not time to give up. There is some progress being made. The P5+1 is on the same page. But it remains to be seen,” he said.
Iran continues to enrich uranium at 60-percent purity and most analysts agree that it is shortening the time to having enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb. The US and its European allies have warned that with the kind of progress Iran is making, the Vienna talks can become meaningless if they drag on.
Iran’s president told the Russian Duma that the “resistance” of nations such as Iran and Russia has weakened the US and put its “strategy of domination” in disarray.
“The strategy of domination has now failed, and the America is in its weakest position,”President Ebrahim Raisi who is on an official visit to Moscow told the representatives of the Russian state Duma while emphasizing that "the desires for domination" persists and new forms of domination are on the agenda.
"The most important goal of this agenda is to weaken independent governments from within, which is pursued through economic sanctions, destabilization, the promotion of insecurity, and false narratives of events; in such a way that they try to change the place of the oppressor and the oppressed in public opinion," Raisi said.
The Iranian President also said the single "concept of resistance" brought about "failure of the policy of military occupation" and forced the US to flee Iraq and Afghanistan.
US forces are still in Iraq with a new mission of training Iraqi forces, instead of combat against the Islamic State group.
Raisi, who held a three-hour meeting with the Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, in his address to the Duma accused Western powers of forging complex plans "to send Takfiri terrorists on new missions" from the Caucasus to Central Asia.
Iranian officials use 'takfiri' to refer to Sunni fundamentalism and as a vague umbrella term to refer to Sunni dissident groups and individuals inside Iran. "Experience has shown that it is pure Islamic thought that can prevent the formation of extremism and Takfiri terrorism," Raisi said.
In a clear show of support to Russia, he also alleged that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is also trying to infiltrate various geographical areas under new guises. "Promoting pro-Western governments and confronting independent democracies based on national identities and traditions is part of NATO's cultural projects that reflect the hypocrisy of this diminishing pattern of behavior."
Calling sanctions "a common form of new domination", he said countering them requires a collective response from “independent nations”.
The US has threatened Russia with more sanctions if it attacks Ukraine amid a serious crisis triggered by large Russian troop concentrations on the Ukrainian border.
On the nuclear issue and the ongoing Vienna talks to restore the 2015 nuclear deal, Raisi said the Islamic Republic will never relinquish its rights but reiterated that Tehran is serious about reaching an agreement, "if the other parties are serious about lifting the sanctions effectively and operationally."
Russia is a signatory to the deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and in recent weeks has played a proactive role in the Vienna talks as a mediator between Iran and the United States which is only indirectly involved in the talks.
Calling the model of cooperation between Tehran and Moscow in Syria successful, Raisi said resistance of the Syrian people and government this has ensured the consolidation of regional security. The Iranian and Russian military interventions in Syria has killed tens of thousands of civilians.
Referring to economic relations between Tehran and Moscow, Raisi said boosting ties will strengthen the economies of both nations and regional and international security. The signing of a 20-year agreement during his Moscow trip has not materialized.
The annual volume of trade between the countries currently stands at around $3 billion. Tehran says it intends to increase it to $25 billion.
As President Joe Biden said Wednesday that there is some progress in Iran nuclear talks, China officially reported buying oil from Tehran, despite US sanctions.
In a press conference, Biden spoke two sentences about the Iran negotiations, but what he said was that it is not time to stop the nuclear talks, which are making “some progress.”
US officials have been saying for weeks that the multilateral negotiations in Vienna to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement, JCPOA, cannot go on forever and should reach a resolution in a matter of “weeks, not months.” But the Biden Administration has not put a clear deadline on when it would decide if the talks were productive.
Iran continues to enrich uranium at 60-percent purity and most analysts agree that it is shortening the time to having enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb. The US and its European allies have warned that with the kind of progress Iran is making the Vienna talks can become meaningless if they drag on.
“It’s not time to give up. There is some progress being made. The P5+1 is on the same page. But it remains to be seen,” was all Biden said during the press conference.
While the US President was saying that the P5, meaning permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, “is on the same page”, data released by China showed for the first time in a year that Beijing is officially importing Iranian oil in violation of US sanctions.
Reuters reported that China imported 260,312 tons of Iranian crude oil in December, according to data from the General Administration of Chinese Customs, which last recorded Iranian oil inflows in December 2020 at 520,000 tons.
Energy monitoring firms were reporting throughout 2021 that China was importing large quantities of Iranian oil indirectly, through third countries without registering the cargos as having originated in Iran. But now Beijing is officially disclosing its imports. The question is if the Biden Administration will respond in some way or prefer to have China’s support in the nuclear talks.
On the other hand, Iran has been boasting lately that it is defeating the sanctions, selling much more oil than in 2019-2020, implying that it does need to make concession at the Vienna talks. So China’s increased volume imports of Iranian oil and its official admission in customs data provides diplomatic leverage to Tehran.
Estimates are that oil exports have topped 600,000 barrels per day in 2021 compared with around 200,000 in 2019 and the first nine months of 2020. Imports from Iran have accounted for about 6% of China's crude oil imports, according to shipping data and trader estimates.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday argued that the Administration cannot provide guarantees to Tehran that the United States will never pull out of the nuclear deal, like former president Donald trump did in 2018.
“In our system you can’t give that kind of quick and serious guarantee. President Biden can certainly say what he will or won’t do as president as long as Iran remains committed to the deal, but we can’t bind future presidents. And that’s one of the things we’re talking about,” he said referring to the Vienna negotiations.
