Iran Delivers Its ‘Constructive’ Comments In Nuclear Talks
Iran’s foreign ministry says it has finalized its comments on the US response to the EU’s draft for reviving the 2015 nuclear deal and sent it to EU coordinator of talks Enrique Mora.
Iran’s foreign ministry says it has finalized its comments on the US response to the EU’s draft for reviving the 2015 nuclear deal and sent it to EU coordinator of talks Enrique Mora.
Foreign ministry spokesman Kanaani said in the early hours on Friday that the Islamic Republic’s response was prepared based on a "constructive approach."
“After receiving the American response, the expert team of the Islamic Republic carefully examined it and after evaluation at different levels, Iran's response was compiled and delivered to the coordinator tonight,” Kanaani said. "The text that was sent has a constructive approach aimed at finalizing the negotiations."
American journalist Laura Rozen quoted the unnamed EU official as saying that the bloc has received Iran’s response “just now”.
Earlier in the day, French President Emmanuel Macron expressed hope for a renewed Iran nuclear deal as President Ebrahim Raisi proclaimed defeat for US ‘maximum pressure.’
“I hope that in the next few days the JCPOA will be concluded,” Macron told French ambassadors in a Paris speech, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action as the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement is officially named.
In Washington, criticism of JCPOA revival has been stepped up both by Congresspeople and the advocacy group, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Fifty lawmakers, mostly Democrats sent a letter to Biden on Thursday asking him to “provide Congress with the full text of any proposal to rejoin the Iran nuclear agreement…including any side agreements, and consult with Congress prior to reentering that agreement.”
In a video interview earlier this week, Mohammad-Saleh Hashemi-Golpaygani, in charge of a government organization called Enjoining Good and Forbidding Evil Headquarters, claimed that gender segregation in higher education institutions will contribute to the progress of science and knowledge.
“I don't have an answer when I'm asked why students are kept separate before they reach adulthood but are mixed when they go to university,” he said.
Boys and girls are strictly separated from primary school, but most universities are mixed gender.
“Families will welcome gender segregation [in higher education]. They want a safe environment [for their children],” he said wildly claiming that there are twenty-one universities and colleges in the world that segregate including some in the United States. He also claimed that the average grade point rose by 1.5 in these universities after separating men and women.
Hashemi-Golpaygani’s remarks have outraged many on social media and websites and newspapers have criticized him for his controversial remarks.
In an editorial Tuesday, the moderate conservative Asriran told Hashem-Golpaygani that with his “imprudent and incorrect statements” -- including the undocumented claim that many of the world's top universities have implemented gender segregation and achieved better academic results as well as existence of facial recognition software that can help identify women with insufficient hijab -- he obliterates the Islamic concept of ‘enjoining good and forbidding evil’ and provides sensational stories for foreign-based Persian language media.
Some social media users have pointed out that Hashemi-Golpaygani’s own daughter has been studying in a mixed-gender university in Belgium.
In the same interview, Hashem-Golpaygani said that public CCTV cameras, including those in metro stations, are programmed to use facial recognition technology to take photos of unveiled women and to compare against photos in a national database to identify those who break the hijab rules. He suggested that the rule breakers be fined in the same way that people are fined for violating traffic regulations.
Hashem-Golpaygani said recently that about half of Iranian women do not abide by the mandatory hijab rules.
In its editorial entitled “Watch Fewer Sci-Fi Movies”, Asriran also told the offical that he should present himself to Iran’s state-run Cinema Organization if he is interested in the science fiction genre. His suggestion that fining hijab-rule-breakers by using blurry CCTV images will help convert them to hijab “would only be possible in sci-fi or comic films,” Asriran wrote.
The website also suggested that such technology, if it were available in the country, would better be used to find dangerous criminals. The police have numerous burglaries, car thefts, and mugging cases on their hands with footage of the culprits who they cannot identify.
In recent months government and security agencies have intensified their efforts to pressure women into abiding by the hijab laws and several rounds of anti-hijab civil disobedience campaigns have followed.
The patrols by the ‘morality police’ have increased on the streets and videos of violent arrests of women and girls as well as confrontations between people and hijab enforcers, including a recent incident in Shiraz which resulted in the closure of the shopping center where it happened, are becoming too common on social media.
“I hope that in the next few days the JCPOA will be concluded,” Macron told French ambassadors in a Paris speech, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action as the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement is officially named.
Speaking to a Tehran conference honoring Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Raisi suggested United States officials had admitted that ‘maximum pressure’ had been defeated by the “will of the Iranian people” and had led nowhere. “The Islamic Republic will not accept domination,” Raisi said. “Today it has been proved that the Islamic Republic of Iran is…a power that will not bow to domination.”
Raisi’s remarks came as Iran is considering the latest US input, sent August 24 via the European Union, into what appears to be the last stage of 17-month talks designed to revive the JCPOA.
A series of reports, both in the Israeli media and emerging from briefings in Iran, have suggested the talks have come to focus on a stage-by-stage approach to reviving the JCPOA, which former US President Donald Trump left in 2018 while imposing ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions.
JCPOA revival in stages
According to an account given by Axios Thursday citing “sources briefed on the draft,” a third stage, beginning with ‘Reimplementation Day,’ would see the Iranian nuclear program back within JCPOA limits and the ‘full’ lifting of those US sanctions incompatible with the 2015 agreement.
This would effectively postpone until ‘Reimplementation Day’ Tehran’s current insistence, as a condition for JCPOA revival, on the ending of an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) probe into unexplained uranium traces found in Iran.
A US official cited by Axios said that, while there would be interim steps before the third stage – both with Iran restricting its nuclear program and the US easing sanctions – any attempt by Iran by Reimplementation Day to go further unless the IAEA probe ended would risk “delaying the lifting of sanctions.”
Time for progress?
Such a timetable might give IAEA director-general Rafael Mariano Grossi time for progress. It could also avoid confrontation at the IAEA board of governors meeting September 12-16, which comes three months after the board censured Iran over failure to explain the uranium traces to the agency’s satisfaction.
But several senior Iranians, including Raisi, have this week stressed Iran’s commitment to the agency dropping the probe before the JCPOA is restored. Sardar Mohammad Ismail Kothari, a parliamentary deputy for Tehran, said Thursday that the current Raisi government, working closely with parliament, had been effective in pursuing Iran’s rights and in upping uranium enrichment to 60 precent, far above the 3.67 percent JCPOA cap, and near the 90 percent generally deemed ‘weapons grade.’
In Washington, criticism of JCPOA revival has been stepped up both by Congresspeople and the advocacy group, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Fifty lawmakers, mostly Democrats sent a letter to Biden on Thursday asking him to “provide Congress with the full text of any proposal to rejoin the Iran nuclear agreement…including any side agreements, and consult with Congress prior to reentering that agreement.”
But proponents of the 2015 agreement have also been active. “Let’s be clear: Trump’s plan of maximum pressure didn’t work,” tweeted Sara Jacobs, a Democrat in the House of Representatives Wednesday. Jeremy Ben-Ami, President of J Street, the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” advocacy group, tweeted Thursday a point-by-point rebuttal of AIPAC’s recent talking points and defended the JCPOA as “the best means of blocking Iran’s pathways to a nuclear weapon.”