US Lawmaker Says Negotiator Using Ukraine Crisis To Cut Slack For Iran

Gabriel Noronha, Former Special Advisor for the Secretary's Iran Action Group in the Trump administration in a series of tweets on Wednesday quoted State Department, National Security Council and European Union unnamed officials as having authorized him to reveal that Malley is preparing to make concessions to Iran that are damaging to US national security.

Noronha said these current officials hope that by revealing details of the concession they hope to prompt the US Congress to act “to stop the capitulation.”

He also charged that Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s chief envoy in the talks, has been the main architect of the deal. Noronha said that his contacts said, “What is happening in Vienna is a total disaster.”

Earlier, “concessions and other misguided policies have led three members of the US negotiating team to leave,” Noronha said in one his tweets.

Republican Senator Jim Inhofe tweeted later that “There is no limits to what @USEnvoyIran will offer Tehran to return to the failed nuclear deal.”

Noronha further said, “US has promised to lift sanctions on some of the regime’s worst terrorists and torturers, leading officials in the regime’s WMD infrastructure, and is currently trying to lift sanctions on the IRGC itself.”

Iran has long demanded that all post-2018 sanctions should be lifted – not just nuclear related sanctions. There are many terrorism and human rights related sanctions. The Biden Administration has insisted that it is willing to lift only nuclear sanctions.

Following Noronha’s revelations, a State Department spokesperson responded to Iran International’s questions, saying, “We are in the final days of a complex negotiation. We are prepared to lift JCPOA-related sanctions in order to end the nuclear and regional crises prompted by our withdrawal.Beyond that, we are not going to respond to specific claims about what sanctions we would be prepared to lift as part of a mutual return to full implementation of the JCPOA.”

According to Noronha, President Biden’s team “is preparing to rescind the Supreme Leader’s Office Executive Order (E.O. 13876) as soon as coming Monday, and lift sanctions on nearly every one of the 112 people/entities sanctioned…”

Top Islamic Republic officials facing serious accusations or evidence of involvement in acts of terrorism are also apparently slated to be de-listed.

Reuters reported last month reported some details about a draft agreement being prepared in Vienna, which did not mention these details. It appeared that the US was moving cautiously, with gradual lifting of economic sanctions.

If what Noronha has reported based on information that he says he has received from current officials is true, Iran would achieve almost everything it has been demanding in 11 months of negotiations.

Republicans and some Democrats in Congress have warned the Biden Administration about making concessions to Iran. It is not clear how they would act to demand accountability from the White House.

The visit comes as Russia's assault on Ukraine continued for a seventh day, and as Western countries have rallied together against the incursion.

"Our duty as leaders is to do everything to stop the bloodshed," Bennett said at a joint press conference.

Bennett also said Israel was watching with concern as Germany, Britain, France, Russia and China negotiate to revive the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which was left in tatters after the US withdrew in 2018.

He said Israel was concerned the deal would not adequately rein in Iran's nuclear program.

Scholz said he understood Israel's worries, but said it was time to move forward on a deal.

In the decades following the Holocaust, in which Nazi Germany killed 6 million Jews, Germany and Israel have become staunch allies.

The countries' Cabinets hold regular joint sessions, and Germany is Israel's most important trade partner in the European Union.

But Germany, like much of Europe, is at odds with Israel when it comes to the Palestinian issue.

Germany has called for a Palestinian state alongside Israel and opposes Israel's settlement activities in the West Bank. Germany is also among world powers negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program.

Reporting by AP

Sources close to the negotiations have told Iran International that Tehran has demanded western powers ask the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to drop its requests for information on uranium traces dating to before 2003 in several undeclared Iranian nuclear sites. Analysts have suggested the traces may relate to equipment supplied by the network of Pakistani scientist AQ Khan.

The United States and the three western European countries in the Vienna talks – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom – have argued that they should not ‘interfere’ in any IAEA investigation. Apparently confirming the Iranian demand, the lead British negotiator Stephanie Al-Qaq wrote on Twitter: “Safeguards are a fundamental part of the non-proliferation system and are separate. We will always reject any attempt to compromise IAEA independence.”

Iran has long argued that the IAEA should drop its repeated questioning over Tehran’s past nuclear work, but it is only in recent days that the issue has emerged as a contentious part of the Vienna talks aimed at reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the IAEA chief, told reporters Wednesday that such outstanding issues needed clarification regardless of “any other external process,” presumably meaning that he wanted answers over the pre-2003 work regardless of what happened with the JCPOA. But Iran’s view that Grossi’s pursuit of the issue is ‘politicized’ might have encouraged it to raise the matter in Vienna.

Western frustrations

Although restoring the JCPOA would extend IAEA inspections and monitoring of the Iranian nuclear program, the western European powers are showing frustration at the last stages of the Vienna talks.

In Israel Wednesday German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said agreement on reviving the JCPOA "cannot be postponed any longer…Now is the time to make a decision…Now is the time to finally say yes to something that represents a good and reasonable solution."

As Iran International reported Saturday, Iran is also still dissatisfied at proposals to ease United States sanctions in return for Tehran returning its nuclear program to JCPOA limits. Iran’s search for ‘guarantees’ that the US would not once again leave the JCPOA, as it did in 2018, has of late been cited less than disagreements over which US sanctions are incompatible with the 2015 deal.

‘Economic guarantees’

Ahmad Ali-Beighi (Ali-Baygi), a member of parliament, Sunday cited parliament speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf (Qalibaf) that “economic guarantees” were part of Iran’s demands. Iran International has also quoted sources close to the Vienna talks that Tehran is seeking the delisting of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) by the US, given their economic role, and the removal of the 2019 US presidential executive order allowing the administration to sanction anyone linked to the office of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – an order used to sanction then foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and then judiciary chief and now president, Ebrahim Raisi (Raeesi).

Ali Shamkhani, Iran’s top security official, said Monday that “bitter experience” with America had left Tehran with no choice but to seek “guarantees and a balanced agreement.” Mohammad Morandi, advisor to Iranian negotiators in Vienna, told Press TV Tuesday that Iran “can’t be pushed into a bad deal or an incomplete deal or a problematic deal.”

That may be changing. The crisis in Ukraine threatens to impinge on negotiations between Tehran and six world powers – China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Exactly how, diplomats are unsure.

Since the Biden administration took office in January 2021, Washington has eased closer to the western European trio (the ‘E3’), while taking part at Vienna only indirectly as the US maintains ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions introduced by President Donald Trump in 2018 on withdrawing from the 2015 deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).

There is no obvious fall-out from the Ukraine crisis on the Vienna talks. Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s lead negotiator, has continued his generally optimistic videos and pictures on Twitter showing his meetings with the US and the E3.

But there is a general wariness. "There's a good chance that a crisis of this magnitude will pollute not only the Iranian file, but many others," a French presidential official told Reuters."This is one of the many subjects on which the relationship with Russia is very severely, very significantly changed by the behaviour of President Vladimir Putin."

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei Tuesday, in a televised speech, said Ukraine was “another victim” as the “US regime creates crises, lives off of crises and feeds on various crises in the world.” Khamenei emphasised that the “US and western powers could not be trusted.”

Trust, guarantees, interests

One of the biggest challenges in the Vienna talks, which those involved have generally said are nearing their end, is Iran’s search for guarantees, both that the US will not again renege on the JCPOA and that neither the US nor the European powers will restrict Iran’s access to world markets. The US ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions threaten punitive action against third parties buying Iran’s oil or dealing with its financial sector.

Three diplomats close to the talks told Reuters that developments in Ukraine had heightened a sense of urgency in Vienna, to the point that agreement on restoring the JCPOA needed to be reached this week before the atmosphere soured. A senior US State Department official said Friday that Washington still thought Moscow wanted to negotiate JCPOA revival, which the official called a “common interest” of the US and Russia.

But there has also been speculation that Iran might feel its position strengthened by a desire in Washington to avoid a second crisis and to see Iranian oil returning to world markets, given the Ukraine conflict has sent oil above $100 a barrel.

Sanctions

Another complication lies is that Russia, with a renewed JCPOA, would be expected, as in the past, to ship out stocks of Iranian enriched uranium. Tehran now has around 12 times the 208kg limitset by the JCPOA. While US and western European sanctions on Russia remain limited, and far less than sanctions on Iran or Afghanistan, they might increase if the crisis in Ukraine continues.

In the Financial Times Tuesday, Alistair Milne, professor of financial economics at Loughborough university, wrote that the experience of Iran showed that the “curious narrative” of barring Russia from the international Swift bank-messaging system would not lead to “cutting Russian money out of global finance” – and that broader measures, similar to those used against Iran since 2004, would be needed.

“We are prepared to walk away if Iran displays an intransigence to making progress," Price told reporters at a regular press briefing of the indirect talks taking place in Vienna.

The United States and its allies and partners will pursue "alternatives" if Iran is "unwilling to engage in good faith," he added, without detailing those alternatives.

Reuters on Monday quoted two sources close to the talks in Vienna as saying that Iran had submitted new demands, while continuing to insist on existing ones, including the removal of a US foreign terrorist organization (FTO) designation against Iran's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).

"Iran's stance after Bagheri's trip to Tehran has become even more uncompromising .... they now insist on removal of sanctions on the IRGC and want to open issues that had already been agreed," one of the sources said.

Tehran has been demanding the lifting of more sanctions than the US is willing to accept, including removing its Revolutionary Guard from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. It also demands firm guarantees that in the future the US will not act contrary to the agreement.