Spokesman Says Iran Got ‘Many Concessions' In Nuclear Talks
The advisor for Iran’s negotiators was reported Thursday saying Tehran had won “many concessions” in talks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
The advisor for Iran’s negotiators was reported Thursday saying Tehran had won “many concessions” in talks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
Mohammad Marandi, who acts as de facto spokesman on the talks, referred both to the four-day round of meetings in Vienna that concluded Monday and to earlier rounds. “Iran was able to make significant progress in all fields, which of course will be announced in due course,” Marandi told the Young Journalists Club, a state-owned news agency.
Marandi claimed western journalist had told him that “many government elites of Western countries, as well as Persian-language media people based abroad” also regarded the talks as a success for Iran.
The Vienna talks – largely indirect contacts between the United States and Iran mediated by the European Union – ended with senior EU official Enrique Mora circulating a document designed to bridge remaining gaps. While the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called this a “final text,” Iranian officials treated it as a set of proposals needing further review.
Awaiting ‘high-level meeting’
Nour News, affiliated to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, reported late Wednesday that the text was being analyzed “at the experts’ level,” but had not yet been discussed by a “high-level meeting.” The SNSC, made up of 24 of Iran’s leading politicians and military commanders, shapes policy on the nuclear issue, although crucial decisions may come in informal discussions around Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
The nuclear talks, beginning in April 2021 in an effort to revive the 2015 agreement (the JCPOA), have wrestled with intertwined political and technical issues – essentially over which US sanctions introduced after Washington left the JCPOA in 2018 contravene the 2015 agreement and how Iran’s atomic program, expanded since 2019, should be returned to JCPOA limits.
Marandi reiterated that Tehran expects the dropping of “false accusations against Iran in the agency,” a reference to enquiries by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) into Iranian nuclear work before 2003. The US and three European JCPOA signatories argue these enquiries arise under Tehran’s basic obligations as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and have nothing to do with renewing the JCPOA.
Iran, on the other hand, argues that the IAEA concluded investigations into Iran’s past nuclear work in 2015, the year the JCPOA was agreed, and revived them only after allegations made by Israel in 2018, the year the US left the JCPOA.
“Let's not forget that before the previous meeting of the Board of Governors [in June, which passed a resolution critical of Iran], the head of the agency, [Rafael Mariano] Grossi, travelled to Israel,” Marandi said.
Iran had promised earlier this year to provide satisfactory answers to the IAEA regarding questions around its past secret nuclear work, but in late May the agency said it had not received convincing explanations.
Guarded comments
In remarks published Thursday on the Rouydad news website, Hossein Maliki, of the Iranian parliament’s security and foreign policy committee, warned that negotiations could be facing a “dead end…because we see less flexibility in the Americans.”
Maliki said he had not seen the Mora text, but his guarded comments – noting Iran’s “positive opinion” on “some provisions” of a “previous text”, an apparent reference to a document circulated by Borrell in late July – suggested he was hedging while long-term JCPOA opponents argued the talks had failed.
The official news agency IRNA reported that Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, in a telephone conversation with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, expressed hope that “the American side, with a realistic and pragmatic view…will provide the ground for an agreement on the final text.”
Bolton told Iran International that there are several American public figures who face direct threats. Axios reported Wednesday that US law enforcement have also told former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that he is a possible target of an Iran plot.
In its denial issued immediately after an indictment was unsealed by the Department of Justice against a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Tehran accused Washington of “weaving a tale” to exert pressure in the nuclear talks.
But as the news of a serious and real threat against former and possibly current US officials sinks in, critics of reviving the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) with Iran are bound to ask the Biden administration not to continue negotiations with Tehran.
Bolton himself warned in a statement on Wednesday, “Iran’s nuclear-weapons and terrorist activities are two sides of the same coin. No responsible US government should think otherwise. America re-entering the failed 2015 Iran nuclear deal would be an unparalleled self-inflicted wound…I remain committed to making sure it does not happen.”
At the same time, current national security adviser Jake Sullivan issued a statement from the White House saying, “Should Iran attack any of our citizens, to include those who continue to serve the United States or those who formerly served, Iran will face severe consequences. We will continue to bring to bear the full resources of the U.S. Government to protect Americans.”
But the DOJ clearly says Iran tried to kill Bolton and many would say this is enough reason for “severe consequences”. However, Reuters quoted an unnamed US official as saying that Washington does not believe the assassination plots should affect talks the JCPOA talks with Tehran.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio tweeted, "Why is Biden still negotiating with Iran on a new “deal” when he knows they are actively trying to assassinate former government officials on U.S. soil?"
Norman Roule, a long-time senior Central Intelligence Agency official and an expert on the Middle East tweeted that the plot against Bolton “was almost certainly approved by the senior-most leadership of Iran & undertaken only after a determination that its exposure would not invite a significant response.” He added that “Iran will likely continue these operations absent swift and meaningful international actions. The failure to demonstrate deterrence risks Iran undertaking an operation that, if successful, could ignite a regional conflict.”
Kylie Moore-Gilbert an Australian-British academic who was a hostage in Iran tweeted, “Not sure how the US can claim its negotiating with Iran in good faith over a seemingly-mythical JCPOA at quite literally the same time that Iran is funding multiple terror plots that aim to assassinate US citizens on US soil.”
After 16 months of negotiations to revive the JCPOA, Iran is still considering a draft submitted by the European Union that coordinates the talks. US has said it is ready to lift the crucial economic sanctions if Iran agrees to return to the limitations set by the 2015 agreement, but Tehran wants more sanctions to be lifted.
One group of sanctions are those imposed on the IRGC and its affiliated entities for involvement in terrorism, which now seem impossible for the administration to agree to, given the DoJ indictments of an IRGC member.
A former State Department official, Gabriel Noronha, who opposes the JCPOA tweeted, “So again today, we saw Jake Sullivan with another stern warning to Iran, that only threatens consequences ONCE Iran attacks a US citizen. There would be no measures taken beforehand, just afterwards when Bolton/Pompeo are dead. This is Russia/Ukraine all over again.”