Washington Not To Opt For Reviving 2015 Nuclear Deal – Ex-Adviser

Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) told Iran International’s Arash Alaei on Wednesday that the Biden administration should never officially walk away from the negotiations. 

However, he added that "I was not happy with the original JCPOA. I was not happy with us leaving the JCPOA. I always supported a longer and stronger agreement, so I think this is a matter on which the US needs to be more in harmony with Europe.” 

Talks initiated by the Biden Administration in April 2021 to return to the accord known as JCPOA faltered last September. Following this failure, protests that began in Iran were brutally suppressed by the government, which led to more isolation for the clerical regime.

Referring to State Department’s neither confirming nor denying recent meetings between US special envoy for Iran Robert Malley and Tehran's UN ambassador in New York, Cardin said such moves depend on strategic issues and the effectiveness of backchannel conversations. 

Another Democrat, Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania said he believes “it’s not likely to reach an agreement anytime soon but I would hope that we continue to pursue that.” “We were in a better posture, if we had that agreement (the JCPOA) in place.”

Meanwhile, Republican Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) told our correspondent that "We should not be negotiating with Iran except to make sure they start giving liberty and freedom to their citizens and stop being a menace to the world.”

The United States and its European allies say that they are not focused on the nuclear talks with Iran because of Tehran’s human rights violations and its arms support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Hundreds of people demonstrated near central bank headquarters in Baghdad Wednesday to protest at the recent slide of the Iraqi dinar against the dollar that has triggered a rise in prices of imported consumer goods.

Hundreds from different Iraqi regions waved Iraqi flags or carried banners demanding government intervention to stop the dinar's decline to around 1,620 to the greenback from 1,470 in November.

The dinar went into a tailspin against the dollar after the New York Federal Reserve imposed tighter controls on international dollar transactions by commercial Iraqi banks in November to halt the illegal siphoning of dollars to neighboring Iran, which is under tough US sanctions.

Under the curbs that took effect this month, Iraqi banks must use an online platform to reveal their transaction details. But most private banks have not registered on the platform and resorted to informal black markets in Baghdad to buy dollars.

This has created dollar shortages as demand has outstripped supply and accelerated the dinar's descent against the greenback.

“Our demands are clear: government must intervene to stop the decline of dinar value because we’re suffering from high prices in local markets,” said Asaad Khudhaer, a laborer who came from the southern city of Najaf to attend the protest.

“Stop the neighbors stealing our dollars,” one banner read, alluding to Iran.

Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani replaced the central bank governor on Monday as he had not taken effective steps to tackle the consequences of the new Fed regulations and their impact on the dinar, government sources told Reuters.

“As Iran’s largest oil customer, the PRC remains a top focus for our sanctions enforcement,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a briefing with reporters.

For two years, the department has stayed low-key on the issue of China violating US oil sanctions on Iran and buying ever-increasing volumes of crude oil at discounted prices.

“We don’t preview potential sanctions actions, but we continue to monitor Iran’s oil exports and to engage Iran’s trading partners about the possibility of exposure to US sanctions,” Price added.

But these efforts and engagements with different countries have not been effective as Iran increased its oil exports from around 250,000 barrels per day in 2019 to more than one million, according to estimates. For some reason, China was buying less than 200,000 barrels a day during the Trump administration, while in 2022 it was buying around 700,000 barrels to most industry estimates.

Neither China nor Iran announce the volume of their oil trade, which takes place through intermediaries who make tanker-to-tanker oil transfers, mix cargoes, and forge documents to hide the source of the oil.

Chinese imports from Iran began to increase in late 2020, exactly when candidate Joe Biden in September of that year announced his plans to return to the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal, which Trump had abandoned two years earlier.

The new administration began indirect negotiations with Iran in April 2021, and China, as a signatory of the 2015 deal known as the JCPOA, was part of the talks in Vienna. From all appearances, Iran dragged out the talks for 18 months and in the end refused to accept a compromise deal put on the table by the European Union.

In the meantime, Tehran was selling ever-increasing volumes of oil to Chinese refineries and making tens of billions of dollars.

At the same time, the Biden administration was signaling that sanctions imposed by its predecessor were not effective to force Iran to curtail its nuclear program, and they should be lifted to revive the JCPOA. At the same time, the administration kept the sanctions on the books to put pressure on Tehran and occasionally announced sanctions on individuals and companies caught red-handed in facilitating sanctions’ violations.

“We, during the course of this administration, have levied multiple tranches of designations targeting Iran’s illicit petroleum and petrochemical trade over the past year or so,” Price said on Tuesday.

But to what extent there was serious pressure on Beijing, is not clear. It seems that the administration now admits its efforts have been ineffective and it intends to increase that pressure.

The new focus began only when the nuclear talks came to a halt in September, just when popular protests broke out in Iran that were met with a brutal and deadly government response that became world headlines.

The administration changed its tune in October, saying that it is no longer focused on JCPOA and its attention is on the struggle of the Iranian people who were demanding their basic rights. Price reiterated the new policy once again on Tuesday, admitting that Iranians “renege on commitments, and “This was a pattern that we’d seen from Iran.”

Another factor that left little option for the Biden team except adopting a tougher posture was Iran’s delivery of kamikaze drones to Russia that have been used against civilian targets in Ukraine.

Mehrad Ebad told ILNA Tuesday that these countries have limited their commercial dealings with Iran.

Previously, some Iranian officials had confirmed that an important part of the country's exports rely on hidden middlemen and barters, including the exchange of oil with goods, which increases the cost of imports and reduces the profit of exports.

Ebad also stated that currently exports from Iran to Europe have reached their lowest level and the largest volume of Iranian exports to Europe, especially Eastern Europe, is carried out through Turkey.

The European Union has not yet published the trade volume for 2022 with Iran, but in 2021, it had about 900 million euros of imports from Iran, which was less than a tenth of the amount before the US imposed sanctions in 2018. Also, the European Union's exports to Iran have decreased by a third and declining to 3.9 billion euros.

Ebad went on to say that large European companies abide by the US sanctions and do not easily communicate with Iran, "but small and medium-sized companies from Germany and Italy continue to cooperate with Iran,”

If Europe's restrictions increase, “we will face a serious challenge in meeting our needs, especially in the field of technology in the oil and gas sector,” he underlined, referring to fresh European sanction being imposed on Iran for its human rights violations and supply of drones to Russia.

“China is the main destination of illicit exports by Iran” and the United States will intensify talks to dissuade Beijing not to break US sanctions, Malley told Bloomberg.

The Trump administration imposed third-party sanctions on Iran’s oil exports after it withdrew from the 2015 nuclear accord, but China increased its purchases when President Joe Biden got elected and pledged to return to the agreement known as the JCPOA.

Latest estimates are that small Chinese refineries are buying at least 700,000 barrels per day at discounted prices through middlemen and illicit channels. Beijing does not officially report the Iranian oil cargoes as they are usually labeled as shipments from other countries.

Some reports say Iranian oil shipments increased in December, but it is not clear if exports to China have surged or more exports are sent elsewhere, such as Venezuela.

Critics have been accusing the Biden administration of not exerting enough pressure on Beijing to stop imports from Iran, hoping that China will play a positive role in nuclear talks with Tehran. These negotiations came to a halt last September and since then the US and its European allies have adopted tougher positions against Iran, for its human rights violations and supplies of kamikaze drones to Russia.