Europe Mulls Next Iran Nuclear Moves, US Evokes ‘Other Options’
France’s foreign affairs spokesperson said Thursday Paris was “extremely concerned” at Iran’s lack of co-operation with the United Nations nuclear watchdog.
France’s foreign affairs spokesperson said Thursday Paris was “extremely concerned” at Iran’s lack of co-operation with the United Nations nuclear watchdog.
In Washington the United States national security spokesman John Kirby said President Joe Biden had told officials to make sure that, should efforts to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal fail, “we have other available options to us to potentially achieve that solid outcome of no nuclear weapons capability for Iran.”
While Kirby was reiterating existing policy, and did not elaborate what these options might be, the French foreign ministry spokesperson Anne-Claire Legendre concentrated on what may be an issue at the September 12-16 board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Legendre said France was consulting with “partners” on how to proceed after an IAEA report circulated Wednesday said there had been no progress in discussions with Tehran since agency director-general Rafael Mariano Grossi in June reported as inadequate explanations given by Tehran over uranium traces found by inspectors.
Iran had not “seized the opportunities” offered by the IAEA to “engage and shed light on the presence of non-declared nuclear materials at non-declared sites,” Legendre said. Following Grossi’s June report, France joined Germany, the United Kingdom, and the US in successfully moving a resolution at the IAEA board censuring Iran.
Whatever the “other options” raised by Kirby, the US and the three European states, the ‘E3’ may opt to tread lightly at the board so as not to scupper remaining hopes for reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).
While the E3 and US insist that the uranium traces are unrelated to JCPOA revival and instead a basic Iranian commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Tehran has repeatedly said the IAEA enquiry into the uranium, which relates to work before 2003, must be dropped before the JCPOA is revived
Will the IAEA board escalate?
The US and E3 may not want to escalate matters at the IAEA board by referring Iran to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), as happened in 2005 when the UNSC went on to impose multilateral sanctions. Russia and China voted against the June resolution at the IAEA board on grounds it undermined diplomacy over JCPOA revival, and both hold UNSC vetoes.
Russia’s IAEA ambassador, Mikhail Ulyanov, this week said another board resolution would be “extremely counterproductive.” As the E3 has edged closer to the Biden administration, Russia and China have maintained that an onus in the talks lies on the US, whose previous president Donald Trump left the JCPOA in 2018 and imposed ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions on Iran.
While analysts increasingly believe that the JCPOA talks are on hold until the November 8 US Congressional elections, Iran’s nuclear program continues to expand. The IAEA’s latest quarterly report showed Tehran’s stocks of highly enriched uranium of 60 percent purity at 55.6 kg, and its overall uranium stockpile at 3,941 kg. Under the JCPOA, Iran is allowed to enrich only to 3.67 percent and to hold 300 kg. Tehran has also recently brought into use more advanced centrifuges banned under the JCPOA.
Malley briefing Congress 14
Both supporters and opponents of the JCPOA in the US say this expansion confirms their views. Rob Malley, the White House special Iran envoy who is due to give a confidential briefing to the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs committee September 14, has argued both that agreement is close and that restoring the JCPOA is the most effective way to curb Iran’s nuclear program.
Critics of the agreement point to reported concessions offered by Washington that would ease the JCPOA’s nuclear restrictions, and they bemoan the billions in frozen overseas assets Iran would regain with the easing of ‘maximum pressure.’ Senator Tommy Tuberville, a Republican, this week criticized efforts to revive the agreement as motivated by a desire to “get Iranian oil to Europe.”
Speaking to the conservative Nameh News website in Tehran, Bigdeli said there are two reasons why the negotiations remain inconclusive for a long time.
"One reason is that there are influential groups in Iran and the United States who are against an agreement," he said, adding that "The second reason is that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is exerting pressure on Tehran over safeguard issues while according to Iranian nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami, Tehran is not prepared to show any further flexibility in this regard."
Bigdeli said that the JCPOA is unlikely to be revived without solving these two problems. "In the meantime," he added "Iranian and US negotiators are likely to send messages back and forth as there seems to be no determination, particularly in the West, to revive the 2015 nuclear deal."
He further reiterated that without direct talks between Iran and America, and without the IAEA's final verdict on the safeguards issue, it is unlikely that the two sides can reach an agreement.
Meanwhile, the spokesman for the Iranian government Ali Bahadori Jahromi told reporters in Tehran on Tuesday [September 6] that Iran has never left the negotiations and will never do that in the future. However, he added that "The other side should give up its excessive demands."
Bahadori further said Iran needs reassuring guarantees in the negotiations, the lifting of sanctions should be meaningful and sustainable and political claims about the safeguards should end.
In another development Iranian political analyst Habibollah Burbur told Nameh News on Tuesday that "No one should fall in love with a new agreement." He added that Iranians should learn to run their country based on what they have, and without any dependency on oil exports."
Burbur added, "We need to convert oil into products that could be sold without fearing the impact of sanctions." In his pessimistic analysis Burbur said: "Westerners can bloc transferring foreign currency to Iran at any given time." He further added that "Since the 1979 revolution, the Americans have always wanted to topple the Islamic Republic, but this is an uncalculated attempt as Iran is being supported by other countries."
Burbur did not name those countries, but Iran has frequently named Russia, China, North Korea and Venezuela as its allies while little is heard from those countries about a military alliance with Iran against the United States or any other country. During the 1980s war between Iran and Iraq, Russia openly supported Iraq against Iran.
Meanwhile, reformist political figure Alimohammad Haghshenas said in an interview with the Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA) on Tuesday that "making an agreement with the United States is a complicated matter and those who make decisions on the matter should be accountable before the next generation of Iranians."
Haghshenas called on Iran's state-owned media including the state television and major news agencies to seek the views of individuals from across the country's political spectrum on the issue of a nuclear agreement with the United States.
He added that governments aligning with various political factions have worked on the nuclear negotiations for many years and all of the political factions should have a say about this matter. He also called on the government not to keep the parliament and political activists in the dark about their measures and decisions about the agreement.
Chief of staff of the armed forces, Gen. Mohammad Bagheri issued a warning on Wednesday to regional countries hosting US troops and bases on social media, reported by the official government news website IRNA. He said that the “terrorist American armed forces” have reduced forces in the Persian Gulf and have relegated the defense of those dependent on it to “Zionist child-killer army” through CENTCOM.
Bagheri went on to say that Tehran has warned regional countries, meaning Persian Gulf Arab states, to cooperate with Iran for enhancing security, and has told them Iran will expand its air and naval presence and intensify military exercises, including drone and missile drills.
The warning came as indication s emerged that talks to restore the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran might not lead to any results before the US mid-term elections in November and perhaps beyond.
An Israeli media report appearing in Times of Israel on Wednesday said, “A new nuclear deal between Iran and world powers is off the table and will not be signed in the foreseeable future.”
According to the report, Israel’s Prime Minister Yair Lapid received this message from President Joe Biden and other officials in recent days.
If true, this indicates that a shift occurred in the Biden Administrations’ thinking about the 17-month long talks with Iran since it received the latest response from Tehran last week.
The European Union submitted a compromise text to Iran and the US on August 8, and the two sides responded with their suggestions. The contents were not made public, but the US called the last response from Iran “not constructive.”
Optimism in August that the two sides were inching toward an agreement somewhat dissipated when Iran began insisting on shelving a probe by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) into its pre-2003 undeclared nuclear activities. Tehran also intensified demands for “guarantees”, seemingly about lifting US sanctions and a commitment by Washington to be held responsible for leaving the agreement in the future.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a Tuesday briefing, "The US and its allies are equally preparing for scenarios with or without mutual return to full implementation of the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).”
“The US president will only conclude a deal that he determines is in the national security interests of the US," she noted, adding that the ultimate goal is to make sure Iran never acquires nuclear weapons.
Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Yair Lapid said Israel will continue to act in all areas against the revival of the Iran nuclear agreement and the threat posed by the Islamic Republic.
During a visit to Nevatim airbase in southern Israel, which houses the Israeli Air Force’s squadron of F-35 fighter jets, he said it is too soon to know if Israel has succeeded in thwarting the looming nuclear agreement with Iran.
An Al Jazeera TV reporter tweeted Tuesday that a senior E3 official told him, “because of the last Iranian response, there can be no return to the JCPOA before the mid-terms, but there will be no JCPOA to return to after the mid-terms.”
However, a schedule change in Israeli Mossad chief David Barnea’s visit to Washington announced Tuesday is hard to explain. A meeting with Congressional intelligence committees was cancelled while Barnea will only meet Biden administration officials.