South Korea Again Pays Iran's UN Dues From Frozen Funds

Reuters reported that the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), the classification company that provides certifications services such as checking that ships are seaworthy, withdrew cover for the two tankers in the past month.

Without the certification -- the so-called class cover that includes vessel safety inspections -- vessels are unable to secure insurance cover or call at most international ports.

Advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) that tracks Iran-related tanker traffic through ship and satellite data, informed the American Bureau of Shipping about the breach of US sanctions in December.

According to correspondence between the UANI and ABS seen by Reuters, several vessels were involved in the transfers of Iranian oil, including the Panama-flagged Karo owned by Hong Kong-based Delta Lines and the Belize-flagged Elsa owned by India-based Karo Shipping Services.

The ABS, the only US firm among the top 12 ship classification societies that are mainly based in Europe and Asia, withdrew the cover for Elsa on December 17 and the Karo on January 13 because of their illicit transshipment operations with Iranian tankers.

"Classification societies are faced with the challenge of keeping up with Iran's tactics in order to avoid facing sanctions themselves," said UANI Claire Jungm

According to NBC News on Saturday, Nephew and Malley had a disagreement over the direction of the negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.

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.

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.

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

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.