US And Iran Seem Far Apart As EU Envoy Says Nuclear Talks ‘Unblocked’

The spokesperson made the remarks on Thursday against the backdrop of visits to Tehran by the European Union’s coordinator of the nuclear talks, Enrique Mora, and Qatar’s ruler, Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani. “The administration, along with our Allies, is preparing equally for scenarios with and without a mutual return to full implementation of the JCPOA.”

About the trips by Mora and Al-Thani, the spokesman said Washington is in close contact with the EU coordinator, who continues to convey messages back and forth, and appreciated “the constructive role Qatar has played in our efforts to achieve diplomatic resolutions of important and difficult issues between the US and Iran, including the unjust detention of US citizens and our effort to achieve a mutual return to full implementation of the JCPOA”.

In response to a question about Iran’s demand to remove the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organization, the spokesperson said that "if Iran wants sanctions lifting that goes beyond the JCPOA (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), they will need to address concerns of ours beyond the JCPOA”.

The official added, “Conversely, if they do not want to use these talks to resolve other bilateral issues beyond the JCPOA, then we are confident that we can very quickly reach an understanding on the JCPOA and begin reimplementing the deal”.

On Friday, the EU's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Mora’s trip has unblocked the negotiations, expressing hope for the prospect of reaching an agreement.

Josep Borrell made the remarks at a G7 meeting in northern Germany on Friday as Enrique Mora arrived back in Europe, saying he believes that two months of deadlock in diplomatic efforts has ended.

He described Iran's response as being "positive enough" after Mora had delivered a message that things could not continue as they were, describing his trip as “better than expected.”

He did not say what "unblocked" means and if the suspended talks in Vienna will resume.

"These things can not be resolved overnight. Let's say the negotiations were blocked and they have been unblocked and that means there is the prospect of reaching a final agreement."

Enrique Mora arrived in Tehran for a two-day trip on Tuesday and met with Ali Bagheri-Kani and other Iranian officials, but with no news about the results of the meeting until late evening in Iran.

Talks to restore the deal with world powers have stalled since March, chiefly over Tehran's insistence that Washington remove the US designation of Foreign Terrorist Organization of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), which is the only example of a sovereign state’s armed forces to be included.

A member of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team said on Thursday that removing the terrorist designation of the IRGC is not enough and Tehran wants other guarantees.

Enrique Mora said in a tweet on Friday that “not a single explanation” was given to him, adding that they airport police also took his passport and phones.

The Spanish diplomat criticized the breach of diplomatic rules, emphasizing that he is “an EU official on an official mission holding a Spanish diplomatic passport”.

About an hour later, he said on twitter that he was released. “Now released along with my two colleagues, the EU ambassador to UN Vienna and the head of the EEAS (the European External Action Service) Iran task force”.

Mora added that they “were kept separated” during the short detention and denounced “the refusal to give any explanation for what seems a violation of the Vienna Convention”.

Moreover, Mora said, “While still waiting for continuing my trip to Brussels I want to underline that in Tehran I raised the need to stop execution of Ahmadreza Djalali and asked for his release on humanitarian grounds”.

His comment about Djalali was among the few bits of information that was announced by any official about the content of his meetings in his two-day trip to Iran.

While Iranian state media portrayed the visit as proof of Iran's expansion of ties with regional countries, a source briefed on the visit told Reuters on Sunday that the emir's trip was aimed to bring the parties to the Iran nuclear pact to "a new middle ground".

Almost a year of indirect talks between Tehran and Washington to save the pact has been on hold since March, chiefly over Tehran's insistence that the US remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), its elite security force, from the US Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list.

Washington has made it clear that it has no such plans, while also not ruling it out.

Iran's hardline rulers believe that an uncompromising approach, spearheaded by the country's strongly anti-Western Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, can force Washington to accept Tehran’s demands, Iranian officials told Reuters last month.

Under the 2015 pact, Iran curbed its sensitive uranium enrichment work, a possible pathway to nuclear arms, in return for the lifting of economic sanctions.

But in 2018, then-US President Donald Trump ditched the pact and reimposed sanctions on Iran, prompting Tehran to retaliate by gradually breaching the pact's nuclear curbs.

Mohammad Marandi, introduced in Iranian media as an “advisor” to its negotiating team, said in Tehran, “Even if America at this moment completely removes the Guards [IRGC] from the terrorism list, the current situation will not change and we would not be able to speak of an agreement, because there are still a few problems remaining, the most fundamental of which is a guarantee by the US over its possible obligations.”

The statement clearly reintroduced past Iranian demands that the United States would not withdraw from a new deal or impose future sanctions in the future. The Biden administration and others have said that the President constitutionally cannot provide such guarantees, as a future administration can act according to its own policies.

Iranian officials and politicians have tried to downplay the issue of removing the IRGC from the US list of terrorist organizations as the main hindrance to reaching an agreement. Marandi’s statement is a more direct manifestation of this approach, given the fact that he has acted as a media advisor to Tehran’s negotiating team.

Whether the emphasis on securing guarantees is an attempt to deflect popular resentment in Iran against the IRGC as the reason for the lack of an agreement, or it is a genuine shift in Tehran’s position in the talks, is difficult to say.

Marandi presented a realistic picture of the Biden administration’s precarious domestic situation in garnering support for reviving the 2015 nuclear agreement, JCPOA. He said there is considerable Congressional opposition to what opponents say are too many US concessions during the Vienna negotiations since April 2021.

But he presented an interpretation of the diplomatic situation that recently officials and media in Tehran have advanced. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the West, especially Europe need Iran’s oil and natural gas and that puts pressure on them to make a deal.

The problem with this reasoning is that without full normalization of relations with the West, Iran’s capacity to supply significant amounts of oil, and especially gas, is very limited. A nuclear agreement would not be sufficient to unlock full Western financial and technological investments needed to boost Iran’s oil and gas production to a significant level. Iran has shortages of gas even for its domestic consumption and its oil minister Javad Owji has said that at least $160 billion is needed to revitalize oil and gas production.

Full normalization of relations means that Iran should drastically retreat from its aggressive regional policies amounting to an attempt to build a Shiite “empire” extending to the Mediterranean. However, Tehran calls its regional policy its “red line.”

Marandi in his interview explicitly brought up the issue of investments. “If there is no guarantee for foreign investments, no company will dare toenter the Iranian market to invest and this would clearly impact our economic interests.”

In other words, Iran wants full economic benefits just for a cap on its nuclear program. Given the secret nature of the Venna talks, it is not clear if the cap would be permanently preventing Iran from expanding its nuclear capabilities or would follow the original JCPOA sunset clauses.

Marandi insisted that the IRGC’s delisting issue is an excuse by the West not to give economic guarantees. In other words Iran’s position of receiving every concession but not negotiating over its regional policies would amount to “having your cake and eating it too.”