Spokesman Says US Open To Direct Nuclear Agreement With Tehran

At the start of talks on Tuesday Amir-Abdollahian expressed hopes his visit would lead to Russian support for a "good, stable and strong nuclear deal," Iran's semi-official ISNA news agency reported. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told his Iranian counterpart that agreement on the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal known as JCPOA, was in the finishing straight.

Amir-Abdollahian’s visit was announced on Monday, days after negotiation in Vienna came to a halt after Russia made a last-minute demand. On March 5, Lavrov said that along with an agreement in Vienna Moscow should get written guarantees from Washington that sanctions imposed for the invasion fo Ukraine will not impact its relations with Tehran.

The United States and Europe have rejected the Russian demand, saying that a nuclear agreement with Iran is not related to the Ukraine crisis.

The official IRNA news website quoted the foreign minister as saying that he will also discuss the Ukraine crisis with Russian officials. On Monday, Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted that he has spoken with his Iranian counterpart and asked him to pass on a message to Moscow: “Russia must stop bombing civilians, commit to the ceasefire, and with draw from Ukraine.”

Iranian state television said an Israeli officer first contacted a neighbor of an employee of the uranium enrichment plant and managed to recruit them both after paying them in cash and digital currency.

Revolutionary Guards security agents were monitoring the network and were able to break it up before the sabotage could be carried out, arresting an unspecified number of people, the television said.

The state news agency IRNA said a new agency called Revolutionary Guards Nuclear Command, which it said had been set up to oversee defense and security matters at nuclear installations, was involved in the operation to stop the planned sabotage.

Iran has accused Israel of carrying out several attacks on facilities linked to its nuclear program and of killing its nuclear scientists over the past years. Israel has neither denied nor confirmed the allegations.

Iranian security agencies in the past have claimed arrests of spies and “terrorists” but have not produced any evidence and or follow up information about trials and possible sentences.

Israel confirmed reports late Monday that several websites, including its government site, were disrupted by a "broad cyberattack". The Iranian IRGC cyber army has attacked Israeli websites in the past.

With reporting by Reuters

Gantz made the remarks on Monday during a symposium commemorating Menachem Begin, founder of the Likud party. Begin was Israeli prime minister in 1982 at the time of the invasion of Lebanon and of Operation Opera, aka Operation Babylon, an airstrike on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor.

“To deal with the Iranian aggression now requires political responsibility, prudent conduct and operational determination − and not hollering from the podium,” Gantz said.

He went on to say that Israel should do whatever it can, with or without the cooperation of its allies, to keep its security intact, adding, “We don’t have the privilege to lose even a single battle”.

Gantz claimed there were parallels between Begin and Yitzhak Rabin, the Labor prime minister killed in 1995 by a right-wing extremist two years after he signed the 1993 ‘Oslo Accords’ with the Palestinian Liberation Organization. “They saw themselves as fighting for Israel’s security and fighting for peace,” Gantz said.

Heading a military delegation, deputy chief of the Israeli Defense Forces Herzi Halevi landed in the US Monday for meetings with security officials at the Pentagon over how Washington might react to Iran firing missiles Sunday at Iraq’s Erbil in response to an Israeli airstrike on Damascus that killed two Iranian soldiers.

Recent reports, claiming to be based on insider information, have indicted that the Biden Administration plans to lift non-nuclear sanctions in the Vienna talks aimed at reviving the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Actions, or JCPOA. Sanctions said to be lifted include terrorism related designations, possibly including entities and individuals affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

“According to press reports, the Biden Administration may soon conclude an agreement with Iran to provide substantial sanctions relief in exchange for merely short-term limitations on Iran’s nuclear program. By every indication, the Biden Administration appears to have given away the store,” a statement from Senate Republicans released on Monday said.

Republicans have been warning the Biden Administration from the time it assumed office not to seek to revive the JCPOA, which they regard as a weak agreement that would not stop Iran from producing nuclear weapons in the future and does not address other threats the Islamic Republic poses to regional countries.

“The administration has thus far refused to commit to submit a new Iran deal to the Senate for ratification as a treaty, as per its constitutional obligation, or for review under statutory requirements that passed on a bipartisan basis in response to the 2015 deal. Additionally, despite earlier promises to the contrary, the administration has failed to adequately consult with Congress,” the statement said.

The issue that might make an agreement in Vienna more controversial is what it would allow Iran to do with advances it has made in the past two years, including deploying more sophisticated uranium enrichment machines and the highly purified fissile material it has stockpiled. Some reports say that Tehran will be allowed to keep the machines called centrifuges, which would allow for a quick resumption of enrichment.

It is also expected that an agreement will require Iran to ship the highly enriched uranium to Russia, which on March 5 made demands to be exempted from Ukraine sanctions in its dealings with Tehran. The sudden request forced diplomats to freeze the Vienna negotiations indefinitely. The United States and its European allies have refused the Russian demand.

These are new elements beyond the Obama-era deal concluded 7 years ago and critics argue that it is could be considered a new agreement, which would need Congressional review of some sort.

“Republicans have made it clear: We would be willing and eager to support an Iran policy that completely blocks Iran’s path to a nuclear weapons capability, constrains Iran’s ballistic missile program, and confronts Iran’s support for terrorism. But if the administration agrees to a deal that fails to achieve these objectives or makes achieving them more difficult, Republicans will do everything in our power to reverse it,” the Senate Republicans said.

Some Democratic lawmakers have recently joined the opposition to the Biden Administration’s drive to reach a new agreement with Iran. The Russian invasion of Ukraine seems to have raised more concern about the Vienna talks in which Moscow has played an important mediating role.

“The central government of Iraq has the responsibility to ensure that its territory is not used as a base for attacks by third parties against Iran,” the ministry’s spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told reporters at his weekly press conference in Tehran Monday. "We urge the Iraqi government to end insecurity in its borders once and for all."

“Iraqi territory was used several times in the past against Iran by third parties including terrorist groups such as Kurdish militants, the United States and the Zionist entity,” he said adding that Tehran had repeatedly warned Iraqi authorities about the use of territory by third parties to attack Iran.

The comment came a day after Iran's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) targeted the capital of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan, Erbil, with over a dozen ballistic missiles. In a statement hours after the attack Sunday, the IRGC took responsibility for targeting Erbil to destroy a "strategic center for conspiracy and evil of the Zionists" for Israel's "recent crimes" against Iran.

The IRGC statement did not specify Israel's "recent crimes" against Iran but on Sunday media including Iran's English language Press TV, claimed the attack was in retaliation for an Israeli airstrike on the Syrian capital of Damascus last Monday in which two IRGC officers were killed. Press TV also called Iran's retaliation a "wake up call for Iraqis about Israeli danger".

But it remains unclear why that last incident suddenly provoked Tehran while Israeli regularly bombs Iranian bases in Syria.

Another possible explanation is an alleged Israeli drone attack on a base inside Iran. Lebanon's pro-Hezbollah Al Mayadeen TV said on Monday that an Israeli base in Erbil led an attack by six drones on a Revolutionary Guard base in Kermanshah, capital of the western province of Kermanshah, in January.

Pro-Iran Kata'ib Hezbollah of Iraq in a statement Monday quoted by the IRGC-linked Tasnim news agency also claiming the operation was launched "in reaction to Israeli drone bombing of locations inside Iranian territory from inside Iraq" and said this was the start of a "new kind of conflict" in Iraq.

These could refer to loud explosions heard in western Iran, including Kermanshah, on January 15 for which Iranian authorities did not offer a clear explanation. Social media reports at the time said there was anti-aircraft activity and one explosion near or at a military base.

Several other mysterious incidents at Iran’s nuclear and military sites since July 2020 have also been attributed to Israel, including the assassination of a top Iranian nuclear official.

Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi and influential Shiite Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr whose party won a majority in the parliament last year, have strongly condemned the Iranian attack on Erbil.

In a tweet Sunday, Al-Kadhimi said this was "an attack on the security" of Iraqi people. Iraq's foreign ministry has summoned the Iranian ambassador to protest to the attack.

Press TV quoted the secretary general of pro-Iran Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba as saying that the Kurdistan region authorities “provide Mossad agents with refuge” which makes it allowable for any party to target the “Zionist spies.”

US officials on Sunday appeared to suggest that Iran’s missile attack on Erbil would not impact the chances of concluding a nuclear agreement with Tehran but some US lawmakers and former officials have urged President Joe Biden to end the talks in Vienna to revive the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

IRGC’s Sunday attack came during a pause in the Vienna nuclear after a last-minute Russian demand for US guarantees it can trade freely with Iran despite Western sanctions imposed for its invasion of Ukraine. Khatibzadeh insisted on Monday that Moscow's demands had nothing to do with the delay in signing an agreement as it was the United States that had to make a decision to accept Iran's demands.