Iran Nuclear Talks Ended The Day Russia Attacked Ukraine

Hossein-Ali Haji Dalegani, a hardliner a member of parliament’s presidium told Fars news agency in Tehran that as part of the Islamic Republic’s serious reaction, access for UN nuclear inspectors to Iran’s nuclear facilities will be blocked.

Iranian officials and media have somewhat focused on the issue of a provision in the 2015 nuclear accord (JCPOA) that allows signatories to trigger the return of international sanctions if Iran is found violating the cap on its nuclear activities. The term ‘snapback’ is also used for bringing back the international sanctions that were suspended after the JCPOA was signed in 2015.

So far, after four years of Iran’s violations by higher-level uranium enrichment, the Western powers have not taken that step, but recent developments have increased the likelihood.

A report by Bloomberg News last week said that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have found uranium particles in Iran’s nuclear installations that were enriched to 84-percent purity. The IAEA has not denied the report. Such a level of purified uranium is the closes Iran ha come to weapons-grade fissile material.

This can be sufficient reason for the three European signatories of the JCPOA – the United Kingdom, France and Germany – to use the trigger mechanism at the UN Security Council to bring back international sanctions.

Russia and China, according to the provisions of the mechanism, cannot veto the move, although they can ignore the sanctions and continue trading with Iran. In the current global circumstances, Russia will certainly not abide by any sanction’s regime.

Nevertheless, Iranian are nervous and government-controlled media in Tehran reflects that mood. What specially rattled nerves was a statement by Israel’s foreign minister Eli Cohen on Tuesday, who said that the West would impose “snapback” sanctions on Iran before the 78th UN General Assembly in September of this year.

Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who was visiting Iraq on Wednesday, threatened that “If America chooses a different path, we are also ready to resort to our Plan B and a different path and all option will be on the table.”

So far however, all the Biden administration has been saying is that they are not pursuing the path to revive the JCPOA, as they had been doing from April 2021 to September 2022.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price on Wednesday reiterated that the JCPOA “has not been on the agenda for some time,” when asked to comment about Iranian claims that the Sultan of Oman will soon visit Tehran to pursue the resumption of nuclear talks after they reached an impasse last September.

While insisting that the administration views diplomacy as the best way to deal with Iran’s nuclear program, Price stressed on three conditions.

“Our focus has been on Iran’s brutality, its repression against its own people; it has been on Iran’s provision of UAV technology to Russia; it’s been on our ceaseless efforts to see our wrongful detainees freed,” Price said, leaving out the issue of Iran’s malign behavior in the region from any potential new talks.

"In the framework of concluding negotiations, IAEA officials will travel to Tehran in the coming days," the minister said during a press briefing with his Iraqi counterpart in Baghdad.

"We hope that IAEA Director Grossi will reach an agreement with Iran's Atomic Energy Organization from a non-political and technical standpoint," Amir-Abdollahian added.

Iran's semi-official Tasnim news agency had earlier reported the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization Mohammad Eslami as saying that IAEA inspectors had been in Tehran since Tuesday and had started negotiations, visits and checks to resolve "ambiguities created by an inspector".

Last week, the UN nuclear watchdog said it was discussing the results of recent verification activities with Iran after Bloomberg News reported that the agency had detected uranium enriched to 84% purity, which is close to weapons grade.

A spokesperson for Iran's Atomic Energy Organization denied the report on Monday and said Tehran's uranium enrichment did not exceed 60% purity.

"Through interactions and coordination, we are preventing the rise of new ambiguities and disruptions to our cooperation with the agency," Eslami was quoted as saying on Wednesday.

Since the US withdrawal from a 2015 nuclear deal in 2018, Iran has gradually started going beyond the pact's nuclear curbs and enriching uranium to up to 60% purity in April 2021.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran has never sought to acquire an atomic bomb," Amir-Abdollahian added.

Report by Reuters

The Sultan of Oman, Haitham bin Tariq, will visit Tehran to hold talks regarding the stalled nuclear negotiation between Iran and the West.

MP Ali Alizadeh told Tasnim News Agency on Tuesday that "Omani authorities have recently expressed willingness to play the role of mediator between Iran and the United States in order to bring the nuclear negotiations to a conclusion”.

He made the comments after the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of the Parliament held a meeting on Tuesday with Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.

In the last two decades, Oman has acted as an intermediary between Tehran and Washington and has been successful in matters such as exchange of prisoners and the resolution of some disputes in nuclear negotiations.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry has recently claimed again that the US has tied the exchange of prisoners between the two countries to the nuclear negotiations.

Iran's negotiations with world powers to revive the 2015 nuclear deal have stalled since September.

Due to the suppression of nationwide protests in Iran and providing Russia with Iranian weapons in the war on Ukraine, the White House National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, said in January the US “priority right now is not the JCPOA". “This is not the moment or the context to place priority on that," Sullivan said.

"Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency are in Tehran and have been starting negotiations, visits and checks ... Ambiguities created by an inspector are being resolved," the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization Mohammad Eslami was quoted by Tasnim news website affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard.

Last week, the UN nuclear watchdog said it was discussing the results of recent verification activities with Iran after Bloomberg News reported that the agency had detected uranium enriched to 84% purity, which is close to weapons grade.

So far, the IAEA has not reported if it has dispatched any officials to Tehran to resolve the issue with enrichment.

A spokesperson for Iran's Atomic Energy Organization denied the report on Monday and said Tehran's uranium enrichment did not exceed 60% purity.

"Through interactions and coordination, we are preventing the rise of new ambiguities and disruptions to our cooperation with the agency," Eslami was quoted as saying on Wednesday.

If the UN watchdog officially confirms the existence of 84-percent enriched uranium in Iran, the European signatories of the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA, the United Kingdom, France and Germany can initiate the agreement’s ‘trigger mechanism’ at the UN Security Council to reinstate international sanctions suspended in 2015.

Since the US withdrawal from a 2015 nuclear deal in 2018, Iran has gradually started going beyond the pact's nuclear curbs and enriching uranium to up to 60% purity in April 2021.

Israel’s Channel 12reported on Tuesday that Netanyahu met five times in recent weeks with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, Mossad head David Barnea, Military Intelligence chief Aharon Haliva and other military figures to examine Israel’s readiness for a possible attack on Iranian nuclear targets.

Netanyahu also reiterated his previous calls on Tuesday that the international community must act to stop Iran’s escalation.

“The only thing that has ever stopped rogue nations from developing nuclear weapons is a credible military threat or a credible military action,” he told a national security conference. “A necessary condition and often a sufficient condition is credible military action. The longer you wait, the harder that becomes. We’ve waited very long.”

Successive governments have warned that Israel will not tolerate a nuclear armed Iran and in recent weeks closer military cooperation and diplomatic coordination have been noticeable with the United States.

US officials have been increasingly signaling that President Joe Biden will not tolerate a nuclear Iran, after JCPOA talks hit a dead-end in September. "If they start getting too close, too close for comfort, then of course we will not be prepared to sit idly by," US Special Representative for Iran Robert Malley told National Public Radio in November.

If Tehran has indeed produced a limited quantity of uranium at 84-percent purity, it can signal a possible intentional escalation to put pressure on the West for concessions in nuclear talks. Tehran has been using this tactic since 2019, and specially since 2021 when the Biden administration signaled its readiness to hold talks.

The Times of Israel wrote about Netanyahu’s meetings with military and intelligence officials that “The report, which was not attributed to any source, included few other details about the discussions, and may itself be designed to telegraph the seriousness of Israeli threats to resort to military action in order to shut down Iran’s suspected drive toward a nuclear weapon.”

However, the Channel 12 report said Netanyahu’s meetings resulted in a decision that Israel will act alone if others do not step in. This decision was shared with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

If Israel’s intention is to increase pressure on the Islamic Republic, beleaguered by political and economic crisis, the timing might have been right. This week a serious financial chaos has gripped the country as its battered currency is falling to unprecedented levels against major currencies and panic has gripped the markets about uncontrollable inflation in the weeks to come. This in turn can ignite more popular protests and unrest.

Iran, having missed a chance last August to come to an agreement with the Biden administration over reviving the 2015 JCPOA deal, now finds itself under siege and has to decide to escalate its nuclear confrontation further or make the necessary concessions.

But since the breakdown in the nuclear talks, Washington has been playing hard to get, saying that it is not focused on resuming nuclear negotiations and demanding that Iran should stop military cooperation with Russia and repression at home.

To what extent the new demands are serious pre-conditions, or a negotiating tactic, is not clear, but after the Iranian regime killed hundreds during protests and supplies drones to Russia, it would be politically costly for Biden to simply revive the 2015 nuclear deal and lift sanctions.