Ambiguity Prevails As Iran Studies US Response To EU Proposal

The website known for reflecting the views of the Supreme National Security Council secretary Ali Shamkhani, also asked why the European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has stayed silent about the nature of the US response.

When Iran responded in writing to an EU draft text on August 15, Borell characterized it as “reasonable” earlier this week. Nour News says that the EU diplomat should also say what he thinks of the US response, and whether Washington’s answers are reasonable or not.

US officials have been quoted as saying that the Biden Administration has rejected three Iranian demands.

The website says that Iranian experts are reviewing Washington’s response and Tehran will take the necessary time to carefully weigh everything according to its “red lines.” It added that in this process Iran will not consider any time limitations, in the same way that in the past it ignored deadlines set by the West.

In the end Nour News reiterates Iran’s position that it will accept an agreement that in addition to guaranteeing its legal rights, also ensures Iran’s “peaceful nuclear activities and ends unfounded safeguards issues. The agreement should also secure Iran’s economic interests, in a “trustworthy and guaranteed” manner.

The hardliner paper wrote in an August 23 commentary that "all the claims about the nuclear agreement are lies and no sanctions are going to be lifted as a result of a deal" with Washington.

The Kayhan repeated its own rude rhetoric about the West in this commentary, calling Europe "a dog trained by the United States" and claimed that Europeans have turned to burning logs [as a result of fuel shortage caused by the war in Ukraine] and consuming rotten food [as a result of food shortage for the same reason]."

While parties are still negotiating to revive the 2015 agreement, JCPOA, Kayhan lashed out at its domestic supporters, mainly Iranian reformists, and wrote: "Weren't they saying every day that Iran was suffering a $100 million loss per day as the revival of the JCPOA was delayed? What has the Iranian economy gained after all that hurry to strike a deal?"

The hardliner daily accused the supporters of a deal with the United States of “throwing the country into a bottomless well."

Meanwhile the daily attributed the closure of several Iranian industrial plants to the nuclear deal while Iranian experts have said repeatedly that those firms were shut down after they were confiscated by the government and because inefficient government management pushed them into bankruptcy and closure.

Many politicians and pundits in recent days have argued that a nuclear deal is not a magic wand that will quickly fix Iran’s economic crisis. They pointed out that financial corruption and the government's inefficiency are responsible for up to 80 percent of the economic crisis in Iran and no breakthrough will happen unless those two problems are effectively tackled.

Incidentally, a report published on the same day in Didban Iran website in Tehran noted that more than half of government employees in Iran have been hired based on their connections, adding that more than 45 percent of government employees in Iran are inefficient as they lack the right skills.

Meanwhile, reformist politician Mehdi Ayati told Nameh News website in Tehran on Tuesday that the revival of the JCPOA will definitely have a positive impact on Iran's economy, but added that the agreement should facilitate Iran's ability to economically benefit from it.

In another development, Iran's nuclear Chief Mohammad Eslami said that "Iran will not accept Israel's positions as the agenda of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)." Reacting to safeguard questions raised by the IAEA and European and US negotiators' insistence on the need for Iran to respond to questions about enriched Uranium traces in several locations, Eslami said: "These accusations are not new, and Tehran has been responding to them for 20 years now." But did not say why Iran has failed to convince the IAEA.

In one of the latest developments regarding a possible agreement, Iran's Security Chief Ali Shamkhani told the press in Tehran that the Supreme Council of National Security which he heads, has had no resolution yet about the negotiations. He added that a possible agreement will be first approved by the SCNS before being put to vote at the parliament (Majles).

“A precise review of the views of the American side has begun,” Nasser Kanaani told the official news agency IRNA. “The Islamic Republic will after the competition of this examination pass on its opinions to the coordinator.”

The European Union, which has coordinated 16-month talks between Iran and world powers over reviving the 2015 agreement, circulated August 8 what its officials called a “final text” designed to overcome remaining differences between Tehran and Washington. Iran responded August 15.

Various reports and anonymous briefings have suggested that remaining challenges concern Tehran’s request for guarantees, over both sanctions and its nuclear program, should the US leave a revived deal, just as it in 2018 abandoned the original agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).

Iran has also stressed an expectation that the International Atomic Energy Agency drop enquiries into nuclear work carried out before 2003, which it says were revived at the behest of Israel, whose leaders have consistently opposed the JCPOA.

‘$100 prize for breaking commitments’

Following recent reports of Israel ramping up behind-the-scenes efforts against further diplomacy, Prime Minister Yair Lapid Wednesday made a strident attack on the JCPOA. He told a press briefing that reviving the agreement, which President Donald Trump left in 2018, would “give Iran a hundred billion dollars a year…[to] spread terror around the globe.” This money, a “prize for [the Iranians] breaking all of their commitments,” would lead to increased support, he said, for Palestinian groups and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Israel supported Trump’s imposition in 2018 of ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions, which threatened punitive action against third parties buying Iranian oil or dealing with its financial sector – measures that would be lifted with a revived JCPOA in return for intrusive international inspections and resumed restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program.

Lapid mocked the EU for making “what they called their ‘final offer’ for a return to the nuclear deal.”

“The Iranians, as always, did not say no,” Lapid said. “They said ‘Yes, but…;’ And then they sent a draft of their own, with more changes and demands…This is not the first time this has happened. The countries of the West draw a red line, the Iranians ignore it, and the red line moves.”

Lapid claimed a revived JCPOA would not “meet the standards set by President Biden himself: preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear state.” He alleged it would endanger the independence of the International Atomic Energy Agency but putting it under “political pressure” to “close open cases,” an apparent reference into the IAEA probe into Iran’s pre-2003 nuclear work.

No agreement obligates Israel

The Israeli prime minister called President Joe Biden, who came to office in 2021 pledging to revive the JCPOA, “one of the best friends Israel has ever known” with whom Israel had “an open dialogue...on all matters of disagreement.” Lapid said he had urged the leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom to break off talks with Iran.

The Israeli premier added that no agreement reached by world powers would “obligate Israel,” which would “act to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear state.” Israel is widely thought responsible for attacks on Iranian nuclear sites and for killing nuclear scientists.

In an interview with an Israeli radio station on Wednesday, former Israeli military intelligence chief, Tamir Hayman, joined other former officials in arguing JCPOA restoration was “the lesser of two evils.” Hayman said it would hold back Iran from being a nuclear threshold state until at least 2030, when some JCPOA restrictions would expire.

Jalil Rahimi Jahanabadi, member of the Iranian parliament’s foreign policy and national security committee, told local media that the same people who were tearing up the JCPOA in recent past now completely agree with its revival.

Rahimi was implicitly referring to hardliners who during the presidency of Hassan Rouhani opposed the agreement his government had concluded with world powers in 2015.

The lawmaker said that opposition to the deal was driven by political motives. He retorted that some politicians “did not want the previous government to restore the agreement. They wanted to be the ones to do it.”

Rahimi, a Sunni Muslim and a two-term parliament member, told the former opponents of JCPOA that they have to answer to the people as “why they did that to their livelihood.”

The US left the JCPOA in 2015 and imposed crippling sanctions on Iran.

Tehran began talks in April 2021, and could have reportedly concluded an agreement to revive the deal, but it was delayed until presidential elections in June 2021 when it was all but certain that hardliner Ebrahim Raisi would be elected.

Five months after the election, the new government dominated by the hardliner camp returned to negotiations in Vienna.

Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, was reiterating an existing stance, but his comments came after a senior United States official told Reuters Monday that Iran had dropped a demand that the IAEA shelve its investigation as part of reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).

“We don’t expect the director general of the agency [Raphael Mariano Grossi] to utter sentences that are wanted by the Zionist regime,” Eslami told Fars News. “We have sent our written protest through our permanent representative in the agency [Iran’s ambassador to United Nations organizations based in Vienna]. Whatever has transpired in these negotiations is aimed at ending these claims before carrying out JCPOA commitments.”

With Iran’s 16-month talks with world powers at a delicate stage, Iran has cited a December 2015 precedent when the agency published a ‘final’ report on its pre-2003 nuclear work. Tehran says the agency’s further enquiries into this work, which led to inspectors finding uranium traces, came only after then Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2018 made allegations based on documents he said were removed by Israeli intelligence from Iran.

Grossi – backed by France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States – has argued that, regardless what happens over the JCPOA, Iran must satisfy the IAEA over these uranium traces purely as part of its ‘safeguards’ commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Grossi ‘hopeful’ on ‘filling in gaps’

In an interview with NPR Tuesday, Grossi said he was “hopeful” Iran would explain the presence of the uranium. “They know they have to do it, we have agreed on a mechanism,” he said. “My legal obligation is to ask the question.”

Grossi said it was a “political question” as to whether adequate explanations were needed before there could be agreement on reviving the JCPOA. The IAEA chief stressed the need for “maximum levels of access and inspection,” which Iran has restricted since 2020 following the US withdrawal in 2018 from the JCPOA. Under the JCPOA, Iran was required to accept more intrusive inspections, including implementation of the ‘additional protocol.’

“If the IAEA is allowed to do our inspection work, we are going to get there – I’m pretty confident,” Grossi said. The director general noted the IAEA had lost “continuity of knowledge” when Iran in June removed 27 cameras from nuclear manufacturing sites and storage facilities that had been installed after the JCPOA.

“If and when the agreement is revived and we can reconnect the cameras, we’ll have to sit down with our Iranian colleagues and see how we can fill in the gaps,” Grossi said. “If we have the correct access, the inspectors of the IAEA will always be in a position to detect in a timely manner any deviation of nuclear material…”

Associated Press reported Wednesday that the US would later today respond, presumably through the European Union, to an Iranian response made August 15 to EU proposals circulated August 8 to bridge remaining gaps over restoring the JCPOA.

While contents of the EU-mediated exchanges have been confidential, claims and reports have emerged over various stumbling blocks. As well as the IAEA probe, these include Iran’s demand for nuclear and economic ‘guarantees’ should the US again leave the JCPOA.