Iran’s Nuclear Chief Criticizes Economic Policy, Emphasizes Talks

The news of the trip to Moscow was released by the twitter account of the Russian permanent mission to the international organizations in Vienna Friday night, but not covered in Iran’s state media. 

During his stay, Bagheri-Kani held a meeting with his counterpart Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov while Moscow’s lead negotiator Mikhail Ulyanov was also present in the session. 

Ulyanov described the meeting as “a very professional exchange of views” on the current situation around the nuclear deal (the JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) and prospects of the Vienna negotiations.

He called on the US to “demonstrate greater flexibility,” noting that his assessment is “despite all the difficulties, the nuclear deal still can be restored.”

Earlier in the week in Doha, Bagheri-Kani met Enrique Mora, the European Union official who chaired year-long talks in Vienna aimed at reviving the 2015 landmark deal.

On Friday, UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo called on both the United States and the Islamic Republic “to quickly mobilize in the same spirit and commitment to resume cooperation under the JCPOA.”

Moreover, in a Thursday statement ahead of a Security Council meeting on the implementation of resolution 2231 that endorsed the 2015 nuclear deal, the UK, France and Germany called on Iran to stop and reverse its nuclear escalation, return to full cooperation with IAEA and seize the offer on the table without further delay.

Several Iranian media outlets on Thursday [June 30] quoted an unnamed senior US official as having said that the chances for an agreement have weakened following the talks in Doha," and that "The United States had accepted the changes suggested by European member states, but Iran refused to accept them."

On Friday, Ahmad Alamolhoda, the influential Friday prayer imam in Mashad said he had warned before the meeting "the idea of holding negotiations in Qatar was a trap laid for Iran by the United States." Alamolhoda used exactly the wording chosen to describe the event by the hardliner daily Kayhan, which is close to the office of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Calling Qatar "a Persian Gulf state dependent on the United States," the firebrand cleric said, "They changed the venue of the negotiations from Vienna to Doha to make us step back from our positions."

"Iran's heroic negotiating team which is headed by a devoted young man who even says his non-compulsory nocturnal prayers every night powerfully resisted against the United States deceit and did not put a step back," Alamolhoda boasted. He also praised Imam Sadeq University for educating "pious individuals such as chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri."

In another development, Iran's former ambassador to Germany Hossein Mousavian, who is currently a member of Princeton University faculoty, wrote in a tweet on 29 June in both English and Persian that "US-Iran-EU nuclear talks in Doha was neither a failure nor a breakthrough. In this round, US and Iranian negotiators got acquainted with the limits of minimum and maximum manoeuvring power of the other side for possible agreement in the next round."

Meanwhile, Mehr News Agency quoted the spokesman for parliament’s National Security and Foreign Relations Committee Abolfazl Amuee as saying that he is no longer optimistic toward the United States returning to the negotiations. "Our initial assessment of the United States' interest in returning to the negotiating table was that they would lift the sanctions. We hope this is true, but we cannot be optimistic about this with any degree of certainty."

Some Iranian news outlets, including the IRGC-linked Tasnim news agency and Noor News, a website close to the Supreme Council of national Security reported that the talks in Doha failed. Some other Iranian news outlets assessed these reports as premature and part of the early biased reporting on the development.

This comes while, according to the reformist website Etemad Online, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told his Qatari counterpart that his assessment of the talks was positive. The new spokesman for the Foreign Ministry Nasser Kanani cautiously reported the end of the talks in Doha without any judgement.

Etemad Online opined: "The end of the talks in Doha closed the door to even the smallest hope among the Iranian public. In the near future, the news about the negotiations will no longer have any impact on trends in Iran’s markets." The reformist website suggested that "Under the circumstances the only expectation from the Raisi administration is to bravely and officially announce the death of the 2015 nuclear agreement, as it has already been in a comma for a long time."

A European Union official said the negotiations with Iran "might not make it over the finishing line" and a US official expressed the view that the odds had lengthened after two days of talks in Qatar.

The UN Security Council met to discuss Iran one day after the talks ended in Doha with no sign of progress on resurrecting the pact.

"I am concerned that we might not make it over the finishing line. My message is: Seize this opportunity to conclude the deal, based on the text that is on the table," European Union Ambassador to the United Nations Olof Skoog said.

The EU coordinates the talks on resurrecting the agreement, which then US President Donald Trump reneged on in 2018 and restored crippling US sanctions on Iran, prompting Tehran to start violating its nuclear restrictions about a year later.

"The prospects for a deal after Doha are worse than they were before Doha and they will be getting worse by the day," the senior US official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

"You could describe Doha at best as treading water, at worst as moving backwards. But at this point treading water is for all practical purposes moving backwards," he added.

The Security Council met to discuss the latest report by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the implementation of a 2015 council resolution that enshrines the nuclear deal, formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

US, British and French diplomats all placed the onus on Iran for the failure to revive the agreement after more than a year of negotiations.

Iran "should urgently take this deal - there will not be a better one," Britain's U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward said.

Iranian government media on Friday carried headlines saying the exact opposite, that the onus is on the US to provide more guarantees over the longevity of the deal and more economic benefits.

The US says that in December a final offer was made to Iran, and it will not accept Tehran’s attempts to introduce new elements into the negotiations and make demands “extraneous” to the nuclear issue.

When after 11 months of talks in Vienna the process came to a halt, it became apparent that Iran was demanding the removal of its Revolutionary Guard from the US Foreign Terrorist Organization list. Washington says that is not one of the sanctions related to the nuclear issue.

"Iran has yet to demonstrate any real urgency to conclude a deal, end the current nuclear crisis and achieve important sanctions lifting," Richard Mills, Deputy US Ambassador to the United Nations, told the meeting.

"Not only has Iran not taken up the offer on the table, but it also added yet more issues which fall outside the JCPOA with maximalist and unrealistic demands," French U.N. Ambassador Nicolas de Riviere said.

Iran, however, described the latest talks as "serious and positive" and said it was ready to strike an agreement.

"Iran has demanded verifiable and objective guarantees from the US that JCPOA will not be torpedoed again, that the US will not violate its obligations again, and that sanctions will not be re-imposed under other pretexts or designations," Iran's UN Ambassador Majid Takht Ravanchi told the council.

The senior US official disputed Tehran's argument that Washington was to blame for the lack of progress, saying the United States had responded positively to proposed EU changes to the draft text of an agreement reached in wider talks in March while Iran had failed to respond to those proposals.

"Their vague demands, reopening of settled issues, and requests clearly unrelated to the JCPOA all suggests to us ... that the real discussion that has to take place is (not) between Iran and the US to resolve remaining differences. It is between Iran and Iran ," the senior US official said.

"At this point, we are not sure if they (the Iranians) know what more they want. They didn’t come to Doha with many specifics," he added.

However, Chinese and Russian diplomats faulted the United States, with Beijing's representative urging Washington to ease unilateral US sanctions on Iran and Russia's calling for all sides to show flexibility.

Reporting by Reuters

"The prospects for a deal after Doha are worse than they were before Doha and they will be getting worse by the day," said the official on condition of anonymity. "You could describe Doha at best as treading water, at worst as moving backwards. But at this point treading water is for all practical purposes moving backwards."

After a pause in the 11-month-long Vienna round of nuclear talks in March, the European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell visited Tehran on June 25 and arranged the talks in Qatar.

The official would not go into the details of the Doha talks, in which European Union officials shuttled between the two sides trying to revive the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement under which Iran had limited its nuclear program in return for relief from economic sanctions.

"Their vague demands, reopening of settled issues, and requests clearly unrelated to the JCPOA all suggests to us ... that the real discussion that has to take place is (not) between Iran and the US to resolve remaining differences," he said. "It is between Iran and Iran to resolve the fundamental question about whether they are interested in a mutual return to the JCPOA."

Report by Reuters

In a Thursday statement ahead of a Security Council meeting on the implementation of resolution 2231 that endorsed the 2015 nuclear deal, the E3 said, “Unfortunately... Iran once again refused to seize the opportunity and, instead, made new extraneous and unrealistic demands,” referring to indirect Tehran-Washington talks held in Doha this week.

Criticizing Iran’s installation and use of additional advanced centrifuges and the removal of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s JCPOA-related surveillance and monitoring equipment, they said some of the most serious steps to accelerate the pace of Tehran’s nuclear program have been taken during the negotiation process aimed at returning Iran and the US to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. 

Expressing deep concerns over Iran’s increasing uranium stockpiles enriched to 20-60 percent purity, the E3 said, “Iran’s complete termination of key JCPOA-related transparency measures is therefore a particularly negative, counterproductive and provocative step, which the UN Security Council cannot remain silent on.”

They also denounced Iran’s “provocative” launch of the Zolfaqar Satellite rocket, which could be capable of delivering nuclear weapons and can be used to construct long-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

“We strongly condemn Iran’s continued destabilizing activity in the region and call upon Iran to stop all ballistic missile activities and proliferation inconsistent with UNSCR 2231,” they concluded.