UN Nuclear Chief Tells Pope Francis Iran Talks At ‘Impasse’
This week’s meeting between United Nations atomic chief Rafael Mariano Grossi and the pontiff focused on Ukraine but took in the stalled Iran nuclear talks.
This week’s meeting between United Nations atomic chief Rafael Mariano Grossi and the pontiff focused on Ukraine but took in the stalled Iran nuclear talks.
Speaking to Catholic media following his discussion Thursday, Grossi, director-general of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the support of Pope Francis and the Holy See was “fundamental” in finding multilateral solutions to international crises. He welcomed the Holy Father’s emphasis on the seriousness of the nuclear threat, and said he sought “spiritual guidance” not just as a Catholic.
The IAEA chief said he would continue efforts to secure the “sanctuary-ization” of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, where the IAEA has sent four staff. Zaporizhzhia has been under Russian control since March and is subject to periodic shelling. The director-general said he would visit Ukraine the week of January 16 and hoped also to visit Moscow.
Following the pope’s expressed concern January 9 over the lapsed 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), at a gathering of ambassadors at Vatican, Grossi acknowledged there was an “impasse” with international negotiations “broken down” over “a volatile and dangerous issue.”
Vatican media had reported that Francis told the ambassadors that he hoped a “concrete solution can be reached as quickly as possible [to restore the JCPOA], for the sake of ensuring a more secure future.”
Iran’s continued expansion of its nuclear program in the absence of a revived JCPOA, Grossi said, constituted “steps towards proliferation.” The director-general said he hoped to go to Tehran “as soon as possible” to resume the agency’s own negotiations with Iran centered on unexplained uranium traces found in sites related to Iranian work carried out before 2003. “I am ready to travel and start again,” Grossi stressed.
‘Fear and anguish’
In response to a question on the pope’s often expressed view that the possession of nuclear weapons was immoral and that a global nuclear threat provoked “fear and anguish,” Grossi stressed the potential of the “exclusively peaceful use of nuclear power” to “provide a clean, carbon-free solution for the global economy.” But he agreed with the head of the Catholic church that “nuclear weapons do not provide security: it is the opposite.”
In Tehran, the hardliner Mehr news highlighted Grossi saying - in his interviews with Vatican media - that no progress had been made in the agency’s bilateral talks with Iran. Mehr repeated accusations by the Islamic Republic that the IAEA had in “past years…repeated some of the claims made by the Israeli regime against Iran’s nuclear program” and insisted Iran had given “detailed answers” to the agency’s questions.
The United States and its leading European allies agree with the IAEA that Iran has not provided satisfying answers to IAEA questions and demand Tehran to resolve the issue.
IAEA inspectors discovered the uranium traces after allegations made 2018 by Benjamin Netanyahu as Israeli prime minister encouraged then United States President Donald Trump’s to leave the JCPOA and slap ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions on Iran.Netanyahu has just returned as prime minister with what Haaretz military correspondent Amos Harel called “an aggressive line on Iran.”
Speaking to the press Wednesday, Price, the State Department spokesman, said the United States had “no reason to put any stock or faith into the statements” made recently by Iranian officials that they were keen to resume talks over reviving the 2015 agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).
“There was a deal to mutually return to the JCPOA that was on the table that was approved by all parties” in September, Price said. “That ultimately went nowhere only because the Iranians weren’t prepared to accept it…The JCPOA hasn’t been on the agenda for some months now.
“There is no denying that Iran presents one of the most complex challenges we face… Its nuclear program has been the focus of successive administrations. Its malign activities throughout the Middle East and in some cases potentially even beyond has been the focus of successive administrations…And now what it is doing to its own people – the repression……[and] the security assistance that it’s providing to Russia – all of these…. represent…one of the most difficult challenges we face.”
While failure to agree JCPOA restoration in either year-long multilateral talks in Vienna or subsequent bilateral US-Iran contacts reflected gaps between Iran and the US over JCPOA restoration, Price’s reference to complexities reflects new complications.
‘On the agenda, but not on the table’
Firstly, Iran’s supply of military drones to Russia has shifted the approach of the three European JCPOA signatories, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. While the European Union foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell has continued diplomatic efforts with Iran, meeting Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in Amman in December, European officials have intimated that Iran’s involvement with Russia precludes JCPOA revival.
Europe long held to the JCPOA logic of separating Iran’s nuclear program from other issues, but it has agreed with the US that the drones supply – even if, as Iran says, before the February outbreak of the latest Ukraine hostilities – violates a JCPOA clause restricting Iran trading certain categories of arms.
European states have joined the US in levying new sanctions against Iran over both the drones and Tehran’s response to recent unrest. Hossein Mousavian, former Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister and nuclear negotiator, told Al-Monitor this meant the JCPOA was now “on the agenda but not on the table.”
Mousavian said the “Europeans are playing a more active role to create an international consensus against Iran, more because of the Ukraine issue…[and] compared to the US…[had] become ‘more Catholic than the Pope’ in advancing hostile policies against Iran.”
A second complication is the return to office in Israel of Benjamin Netanyahu with a coalition including ultra-Zionists, which has created a new challenge for Washington. While Netanyahu, who has for decades portrayed Iran as on the threshold of a nuclear weapon, is playing up his warm relationship with President Joe Biden, there are clear US nerves.
‘Security and stability’
A Pentagon read-out of the first telephone call, late Wednesday, between US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and new Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant featured Austin warning Israel not to “undermine security and stability in the West Bank,” a reference to speeding up Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian land.
The US read-out referred to agreement “on the need to work together to address…regional challenges, including threats posed by Iran’s destabilizing activities,” while the Israeli defense department statement said Gallant had “emphasized in the conversation Israel’s commitment to do whatever it takes to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons...”
Something similar happened with Monday’s call between Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State, and Eli Cohen, the Israeli foreign minister. A right-wing Israeli newspaper cited sources that Blinken had proclaimed the JCPOA dead. The US read-out of the call made no mention of this, and a US official subsequently denied it.
Security analysts have also discussed whether growing US-Israel military co-operation, highlighted this week by joint air drills, makes an attack on Iran more likely or is rather a means to rein in a Netanyahu-led Israel.
The former head of parliament’s (Majles) foreign relations and national security committee Heshmatolah Falahatpisheh told Nameh News in Tehran January 3 that "The United States will return to the JCPOA, but first, Iran needs to do four things: Settling domestic differences and reducing tensions, bringing about relative stability to the country's economy, making those who prevented the revival of the deal during the past two years accountable, and sending a new team to continue the negotiations."
Since negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear deal or JCPOA broke down in September, the Biden administration and its European allies have put the talks on the backburner and even President Joe Biden said in early November that “JCPOA is dead.”
According to Nameh News, Falahatpisheh is one of those politicians who believe diplomacy should be given yet another chance before pronouncing the JCPOA dead. Falahatpisheh reiterated that Europe and the US will certainly return to negotiations in 2023 and Iran should welcome this.
Falahatpisheh said whatever that has been done so far to save the JCPOA were tactical moves rather than strategic changes, adding that both the United States and Europe are trying to weaken Iran's bargaining power.
Referring to the ongoing uprising in Iran, Falahatpisheh said, the United States and Europe assume that the protests have weakened Iran's bargaining power. That is why they pretend that they do not need to continue negotiations. On the other hand, the positions of anti-JCPOA political figures in Iran contribute to the Western apathy for more talks.
"Under the current situation, it is better for those who always opposed the JCPOA to stop further weakening Iran's diplomacy by commenting on the issue," Falahatpisheh said. He added that "Iran should change its nuclear negotiators and get rid of those who go to the negotiations to disrupt previous agreements rather than reaching a deal."
Falahatpisheh’s was clearly referring to Ali Bagheri-Kani, the chief Iranian negotiator, who is a protégé of Saeed Jalili, a hardliner anti-West ideologue.
In another development, Jalili, one of the staunch opponents of an agreement with the United States, has accused former President Hassan Rouhani of “tying Iran economic development to the JCPOA” and contributing to the current crisis. Jalili and other hardliners know that they being blames for the continuation of US sanctions by preventing a nuclear deal and are twisting facts to blame others.
Jalili, who is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's representative to Iran's Supreme National Security Council, further charged that "the enemy started instigating major protests in Iran and began to make Iran insecure after it found out that its immense pressure on the country's economy will not work." He called the JCPOA "an imaginary" achievement for the previous government.
Meanwhile, hardline lawmaker Ahmad Rastineh advised Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi to "escape the trap of the JCPOA," and called the 2015 nuclear deal "A deceit by the United States."
Repeating a fallacy Iranian ultraconservatives have been trumpeting about the US allegedly sanctioning the export of medicines to Iran, Rastineh said: "When they sanction medicine sales to Iran, how can we expect them to recognize the rights of this oppressed nation." The lawmaker's comment is contrary to Iranian officials' statements denying US sanctions on medicine.
Rastineh charged, "every time US officials talk about starting or stopping the negotiations, in fact, they wish to disrupt Iran's economy and hurt its currency."
In fact, economists and even many regime insiders say that in the absence of an agreement with the West people are sending tens of billions of dollars abroad and no one is investing in the economy.