Iran, E3 Negotiators In Vienna Return Home For Consultations

In an interview with Fox News Friday, Pompeo drew attention to an animation video published on the official website of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei showing a man targeting former President Donald Trump playing golf.

Pompeo said, “I have seen a little clip of a video where they are threatening to kill President Trump and myself, and yet we have negotiators sitting at the table in Vienna.”

The White House warned Iran on Sunday [Jan. 9] after numerous threats by Islamic Republic officials to take revenge from American and Israeli officials they hold responsible for the targeted killing of Iranian operative Qasem Soleimani in January 2020.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Iran will face severe consequences if it attacks any Americans, but negotiations to revive the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran continue in Vienna.

Days after the warning, Iraqi militias fired rockets at Baghdad’s Green Zone and the US embassy late on Thursday.

On Soleimani’s killing Pompeo said, “We kept Americans safe. Today we have negotiators with the Iranians willing to give them money, resources, power tools to continue to build their terror network. It is an enormous mistake.”

If the talks in Vienna succeed, the United States will lift most economic sanctions imposed by Trump in 2018 when he withdrew from the nuclear agreement arguing that it was a weak deal, which would not stop Tehran form acquiring nuclear weapons in the future.

“I can't figure out why we're in Vienna negotiating with an Iranian regime attacking diplomats in Baghdad and threatening senior officials,” Pompeo, who has always expressed a hardline position toward the Islamic Republic, asked.

The Fox News reporter asked Pompeo what he thinks about the Biden Administration spokesperson Jen Psaki blaming the nuclear standoff with Iran on Trump’s decision to pull out of the JCPOA.

“She's living in a fantasy world disconnected from the real world that was the JCPOA,” the former secretary of state said, and added, “It created a clear path for a nuclear weapon and an entire program of nuclear weapons that the Iranians would have had possession.”

Pompeo continued with the argument that the Trump administration made the right decision to pull out of the agreement and given four more years, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei would capitulate and sign a new agreement which would ban Iran “from enriching uranium and

threatening Israel and the United States.”

The Biden Administration argues that Trump’s sanctions did not have the desired effect and pushed Iran to increase its uranium enrichment and malign activities in the region.

In reality, both are right in a sense, but there are two issues. First, is the dimension of time. If US sanctions were kept in place and enforced, Iran’s current economic crisis could force it to negotiate even with a second Trump administration. But in less than three years from mid-2018 to January 2021, Tehran resisted and refused to negotiate with Washington.

Second, Iran’s dangerous expansion of uranium enrichment accelerated after President Joe Biden said he wanted to revive the nuclear agreement and lift sanctions. Also, the Biden administration has not enforced sanctions strictly and China sensing a weakness has doubled its illicit oil imports from Tehran, helping it to adopt a tough position in Vienna.

In an interview with NPR on Thursday, Blinken reiterated that the US policy remains preventing the Islamic Republic from acquiring a nuclear bomb, noting that the 2015 agreement, JCPOA, had managed to “put Iran’s nuclear program in a box”.

Admitting that Iran is closer than ever to threshold capability to build atomic bombs, he said, “Iran is getting closer and closer to the point where they could produce on very, very short order enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon”.

He said that Washington is in this “challenging situation” due to “one of the worst decisions made in recent American foreign policy” that was walking away from the nuclear agreement, officially known as the JCPOA.

Blinken said “the best thing for our security and the security of our allies and partners in the region” is getting back to the JCPOA “in the weeks ahead – not months ahead, weeks ahead” since Iran is “making advances that will become increasingly hard to reverse because they’re learning things, they’re doing new things” without the constraints of the deal.

He repeated earlier statements that the US is lookingat other options if it can’t get back to mutual compliance in a few weeks.

The signatories have pointed out that Administration officials say the talks are not progressing and Biden should stop the attempt to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement, the JCPOA, and instead strongly enforce existing sanctions, “particularly with respect to the oil trade between Iran and the People’s Republic of China (PRC).”

Chinese illicit imports of Iranian oil in contravention of US sanctions at least doubled in 2021, as Iran’s daily exports now stand at around 600,000 barrels.

The lawmakers also highlighted Iran’s advancement in enriching uranium at 60 percent, which started one year ago as the Biden Administration was preparing to enter talks with Tehran. Calling Iran’s actions and delaying tactics “provocations” the letter says this behavior is “the epitome of bad faith,” and calls for a strong enforcement of existing sanctions.

“If Iran is not prepared to negotiate as things stand, we need to build our leverage to compel them to negotiate a better, stricter deal with no sunsets,” the lawmakers say.

As Republicans criticize the Administration’s policy toward Iran, the White House is trying to blame former president Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA, as the reason for the current situation.

Speaking to the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA) Wednesday, Vahid Jalalzadeh said the other parties to the 2015 nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) want an interim deal and have made some proposals. "This is not ideal although we have not ruled it out and are considering it," Jalalzadeh said.

Jalalzadeh insisted that Iran does not want a new deal and said the United States wants the JCPOA to be restored because it will bring advantages to it such as limiting Iran's nuclear capabilities and added that the Islamic Republic would only allow the return of the US if it can be assured that Iran can also reap the benefits of the deal.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Monday after Russian-US talks that "various schemes were possible" for reaching the ultimate goal in the Vienna talks. "A step-by-step approach based on reciprocity [is likely to be used] to achieve the main goal," the top Russian diplomat said according to Tass while reiterating that that he saw no need for setting any deadlines for reaching a final decision on the JCPOA.

The US and its European allies have warned that the window for further talks in Vienna could close by the end of January or the beginning of February. Following high-level talks with Israeli officials in Jerusalem on December 22, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told Haaretz that Washington and others have not publicly put a date on the calendar “but behind closed doors, there is a deadline, and it is not far away.”

On Monday, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told reporters that Tehran would not agree to any deals without the lifting of US sanctions and "verification and receiving guarantees" and it only wants a "lasting and reliable agreement". Khatibzadeh said Tehran was not satified with the pace of the talks and would not accept any "forged dates" to conclude the talks.

Tasnim news agency which is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), said Wednesday that it has been informed by its sources that "a major part of the talks" in Vienna in the past few days were focused on "verification" of the lifting of sanctions and "receiving guarantees" that the other sides will not renege on the deal.

Tasnim also reported that "non-papers are exchanged on a daily basis" with the US delegation through the European Union representative Enrique Mora. The Iranian delegation insists on these two demands, Tasnim said, to make sure the US would not fail to deliver its commitments “as occurred during the presidency of Barack Obama”, or withdrawal as his successor Donald Trump did. "The stability factor in the agreement is of a higher importance," Tasnim said to ensure any prospective agreement would have lasting results.

"During the Obama period Iran's compliance was meticulously and quantitively verified by the International Atomic Energy Organization (IAEA) whereas there was no mechanism for verification of the other sides' compliance with the lifting of sanctions. This was the reason that the lifting of sanctions did not bear tangible outcomes for Iran," Tasnim wrote.

Iran and world powers negotiating in Vienna are still far from any agreement to revive their 2015 nuclear deal despite making some progress at the end of December, France's foreign minister said on Tuesday.

Iran and Russia have sounded a much more optimistic tone since late December, speaking of progress virtually on daily basis. Iran even said on Monday its negotiating team is moving "at the speed of light".

Indirect talks between Iran and the United States on salvaging the 2015 Iran nuclear deal resumed on January 3. The United Kingdom, France, Germany and EU officials act as mediators during the talk. Russia has also assumed the role of a mediator, with its chief envoy, Mikhail Ulyanov often meeting with US Special Representative for Iran Robert Malley.

Western diplomats have indicated they are hoping to have a breakthrough by the end of January or early February, but sharp differences remain with the toughest issues still unresolved. Iran has rejected any deadline imposed by Western powers.

"The discussions are ongoing. They are slow, too slow and that creates a gap that jeopardizes the chance of finding a solution that respects the interests of all sides," Jean-Yves le Drian told a parliamentary hearing.

"Bits of progress were made at the end of December, but we are still far from concluding this negotiation."

At a US State Department briefing, Victoria Nuland, the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, was asked about the Vienna talks, but she sidestepped the question. The department spokesman Ned Price acknowledged that the pace was much slower than needed to save the JCPOA.

He referred to earlier US statements that there was modest progress in the past two weeks, but added, “Of course, that progress needs to be more than modest if we are going to be in a position to salvage the JCPOA and to ensure that the nonproliferation benefits that the JCPOA conveys aren’t diminished, watered down, eliminated by the advancements that Iran has made in its nuclear program.”

Asked if the United States believes Iran has a nuclear program that could lead to the same situation that exists with North Korea, Price threw the ball to the UN nuclear watchdog, IAEA’s court, saying they are the ones who have inspections in Iran.

The IAEA inspections have not stopped Iran’s uranium enrichment at higher levels that have produced more than 200 kilograms of enriched fissile material. The IAEA also cannot know about any Iranian activities at hidden or military sites because its inspections are limited to a few designated installations, unless there is credible evidence from other sources pointing to illicit activities.

Price again insisted that the current crisis with Iran’s nuclear program is the result of former president Donald Trump pulling out of the JCPOA in 2018, in “an ill-considered or perhaps unconsidered decision...” He reiterated that Trump’s move and imposition of ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions did not produce the desired results, and “Quite the opposite is true. “

But the Biden Administration policy of trying to restore the JCPOA, that Trump and other critics deemed insufficient to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power, has also not succeeded.

Iran began its higher-level uranium enrichment at 60 percent purity after President Joe Biden’s election, just weeks before the Vienna talks began last April.

With reporting by Reuters