Iran International
Iran's says it is awaiting a political decision by Washington on nuclear talks and reiterated that a deal is possible "tomorrow" if the US provides guarantees.
“There will be no need to [wait] until the end of February if the European and American sides respond to Iran's initiatives today,” spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told a press conference in Tehran. “We can announce an agreement in Vienna tomorrow…The agreement is awaiting the other side's political decisions.”
Khatibzadeh said Iran needed "concrete guarantees" that that the US would not again withdraw from the 2015 deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) as it did under President Donald Trump in 2018.
The spokesman was referring to reports of informal briefings that the end of the month constituted a deadline, a notion Iran has rejected. Khatibzadeh said that Iran and remaining JCPOA signatories – China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom – were "seeking to get guarantees from the US” over Washington lifting all sanctions incompatible with the JPCOA and the United Nations Security Council resolution 2231, which endorsed the nuclear agreement.
Khatibzadeh reiterated that such sanctions should be removed "irrespective of what they are called or false labels," referring to statements by Trump administration officials that sanctions under the rubric of ‘human rights,’ ‘links to the leader’s office,’ or other ‘labels’ were designed to complicate any subsequent attempts to restore the JCPOA.
Mohammad Marandi, media adviser to Iranian negotiators in Vienna, told Russia's Sputnik that it is too early to know whether the US would accept Iranian conditions. "There is a significant possibility that there will be an agreement...as we see some movement from the US and Europe,” he said. “But there is also a chance there won't. Everything will depend on Washington and on whether they really want it."
Marandi told Sputnik that Iran wanted a "proper verification process," meaning transparency over the removal of sanctions. He reiterated that despite its pledges under the JCPOA, the US even after signing the agreement maintained formal and informal sanctions that precluded Iran from benefiting fully from the agreement.
International sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council were removed in 2015 and both the United States and Europe complied by removing sanctions incompatible with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Actions (JCPOA).
'Behind closed doors'
"In 2015, we made sure to implement the deal,” Marandi said. “It was [President Barack] Obama, who didn't. Behind closed doors, he told the Treasury and various firms not to work with us."
He did not offer any evidence for claiming Obama obstructed efforts to comply with JCPOA.
Ali Shamkhani, Iran’s top security, tweeted Sunday that a “US political decision to realize or refuse to accept the requirements of a credible and lasting deal based on the principles accepted in JCPOA can replace speculation." Shamkhani suggested in another tweet that he was not optimistic as “western parties” − presumably meaning the US and western Europeans − were evading real commitments.
Asked about Shamkhani's remarks at his press conference, Khatibzadeh said developments in Vienna had reached “a difficult stage” with “important and key matters that all sides are following up closely.”
A source familiar with the talks told Iran International Monday that Iran was making “unrealistic demands,” which if pressed meant the “talks are bound to fail.” But Russia's envoy to the talks, Mikhail Ulyanov, wrote in a tweet Sunday that a meeting between remaining JCPOA participants without Iran had confirmed “significant progress has been made in the course of negotiations.”
An Iranian source familiar with the talks told Iran's Press TV Sunday that “rumors” were unfounded that the US would engage directly with Iran in the JCPOA Joint Commission. Tehran has insisted that Washington cannot take part in JCPOA structures until it returns to the agreement.
The February 10 event was organized by the National Union for Democracy in Iran (NUFDI), a nonprofit organization of Iranian Americans who want to raise awareness about the country. The conference was attended by leading experts and activists who have close involvement with issues related to Iran or a keen interest.
During the event, former United States Special Envoy for Iran Elliott Abrams spoke about the difference between Iran and the Islamic Republic, saying that Washington often only focuses on one issue such as the hostages or Tehran’s nuclear program and forgets that there is a country with tens of millions of people there who are being repressed by the regime.
“The problem is not Iran… it’s the Islamic Republic”, he underlined, saying that “the people of Iran never voted to support Houthi attacks on the Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The people of Iran never voted in a referendum if they should have a policy of death to America, death to Israel”.
He added that there is “too little attention about the human rights situation in the country”.
Abrams argued that there is no unified theory on how to deal with Iran, for example Israel is worried about the Islamic Republic building a nuclear bomb but Saudi Arabia is concerned about Iran’s support for Houthis or the proxy militias in Iraq.
“If you say regime change, people think you mean war” but this is not how the US seeks regime change in Iran. “We stand with the people of Iran in their desire for hopefully peaceful change toward a democratic regime”.
By regime change, “we mean allowing the people of Iran to determine their own future”, Abrams stated.
Brian Hook, also a former US special representative for Iran, described the Islamic Republic as the “world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism” noting that Iran’s claims about peaceful nuclear power are not true because they continue enriching uranium.
He defended Donald Trump’s decision to leave the nuclear deal, saying that when such a country is talking about peaceful nuclear power and continues enriching uranium, “if you accept it, it would be hypercritical to tell others that they cannot enrich”.
“We should not be resigned to Iran as a nuclear threshold state; it will change the balance of power in the Middle East profoundly”, Hook said, adding that “if talking and dialogue worked, we would have solved it a long time ago. We have to put in place a campaign of pressure, diplomatic, economic, all of it”.
He said the Iranian regime should understand that enrichment is a non-negotiable issue, saying all the talks with Iran should be focused on this.
Iran ramped up its enrichment after the Trump administration fully sanctioned its oil exports in May 2019 and took it to a higher level when President Joe Biden signaled he was ready to negotiate and restore the JCPOA.
Hook said that he is worried if the Vienna talks reach a conclusion that sees sanctions lifted and Iran back to the Swift global banking system and opening the economy, “that money doesn’t go to the Iranian people; it goes to Hezbollah, Hamas, PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) and Yemen”.
The former diplomat said the Iranian regime “is the last revolutionary regime on earth” with a global ambition and expressed hope that “over time the Iranian people would have a truly representative government”.
Morgan Ortagus, the spokesperson for the US Department of State from 2019 to 2021 said that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had promised a longer and stronger deal with Iran, but it seems that what the US is getting now is “even worse than the original deal in 2015”.
Ortagus described the deal as a “political football” adding that “If and when Republicans get back to power… they get out of the deal again”.
She criticized “the failed mindset of a deal or a war” saying that the JCPOA is “a very flawed deal” and it is getting even worse if you take the terrorism sanctions off, when Iran has done nothing to deserve having those sanctions lifted.