Iranians Debate Economic Loss As Nuclear Deal In Limbo

Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reiterated his desire to settle outstanding monitoring issues over Iran’s nuclear program and his readiness “to re-engage” with the Iranians.

In speeches to the General Assembly, both President Ebrahim Raisi and President Joe Biden expressed willingness to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The agreement has lapsed since former President Donald Trump withdrew the US in 2018 and imposed draconian sanctions targeting Iran’s energy exports and financial sector.

In a speech littered with references to unjust and unilateral US behavior, including over ‘human rights,’ Raisi argued that with 2 percent of the world’s nuclear activities, Iran had been subject to 35 percent of international inspections.

Raisi stressed Iran’s commitment to the peaceful use of nuclear technology. As verified by 15 IAEA reports, Iran had observed the terms of the JCPOA, he said.

Raisi highlighted Tehran’s concern over a lack of ‘guarantees’ that could cushion Iran should the US again leave the accord and re-impose sanctions. This appears to be a central remaining challenge in 18-month JCPOA talks between Iran and world powers along with Tehran’s expectation that the IAEA drop enquiries into its pre-2003 work, enquiries Grossi is committed to continue.

Speaking shortly after Raisi, Biden told the UN General Assembly the US was “prepared for a mutual return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action if Iran steps up to its obligations.” Biden said the US would “not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon” and that he continued “to believe diplomacy is the best way to achieve this outcome.”

Biden said the US stood “with the brave citizens and the brave women of Iran who right now are demonstrating to secure their basic rights.”

Raisi made no reference to the protests that continued Wednesday as the government mostly shut down the internet in the country to prevent news and images being shared.

Raisi in an interview last week with CBS’s ‘60 Minutes’ program ruled out a “face to face” with Biden in New York. On Tuesday he met French President Macron, who then reiterated to journalists that Paris expected Tehran to shift in talks over reviving the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), the 2015 UN-endorsed agreement lifting international sanctions and limiting the Iran nuclear program.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian met foreign ministers from Qatar, Lebanon and South Korea on Monday. Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani tweeted Tuesday they had discussed “the latest developments in the negotiations to return to the Joint Action Plan [sic] with the US.” The minister said he was “looking forward to our cooperative efforts in this regard.”

With talks apparently on hold to revive the JCPOA, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters Tuesday Washington did “not expect a breakthrough” at the UN General Assembly but was still “open to both sides resuming compliance with the accord.” US officials have argued that after 18 months of talks Iran has hardened its stance since early August.

While accepting that President Donald Trump’s 2018 decision to leave the JCPOA led Iran to expand its nuclear program beyond the agreement’s limits, the Biden administration has continued Trump-era sanctions, which target third parties globally, to weaken Iran. Raisi was himself sanctioned in 2019 under a Trump executive order over links to the office of Iran’s leader Ali Khamenei.

Raisi reiterates need for ‘guarantees’

Following his meeting with Macron, Raisi’s office said he had restated Iran’s belief the JCPOA could not be revived without the International Atomic Energy Agency ending enquiries into Tehran’s nuclear work before 2003. Raisi also reiterated as “reasonable and logical,” Iran’s demand for guarantees that it would be cushioned againstharmful fall-out should the US leave a revived JCPOA.

In a television interview Friday with the al-Jazeera network at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Samarkand, Raisi argued Iran was countering US ‘maximum pressure’ through developing economic links with “independent countries” and boosting its own domestic industry.

In The Hague, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN body known as the World Court, was told by Iranian lawyers Monday that the US had flouted international law in creating an “industry of litigation” against Tehran.

The case goes back to 2016, when Iran went to the ICJ after the US Supreme Court ordered $2 billion in Iranian assets seized and given to survivors, or relatives of those killed, in attacks including the 1983 Beirut bombing of US troops following the Israeli invasion. Washington holds Iran responsible. The court hearing continues until Friday.

According to Lebanese TV station Al-Manar, Iranian officials told a visiting Lebanese technical delegation on Tuesday that Tehran is ready to start the shipments.

On Monday, Iran's embassy in Beirut said tankers could be in Lebanon within two weeks. A Lebanese energy ministry spokesperson said they were unaware whether the fuel import deal had been struck but said "any gift from anywhere is welcome".

If the deal goes through, it would be Iran's first supply of fuel directly to the Lebanese state. The Islamic Republic previously sent some shipments of fuel to its ally Hezbollah, an armed group that is part of Lebanon's coalition government.

Earlier in September, two Lebanese government sources said Beirut was about to send a delegation to Iran for talks on acquiring “free fuel” after Iran's Ambassador Mojtaba Amani proposed an Iranian "gift" of fuel to the country.

Lebanon has been struggling with outages for decades but its economic meltdown since 2019 has drained state reserves and slowed down imports of fuel for government plants, leaving most of the country with just one or two hours of state-provided electricity per day.

Lebanon has natural gas fields in the Mediterranean Sea but a boundary dispute with Israel has so far prevented gas extraction that could help its economy.

The delivery of free fuel to another country is a sensitive issue in Iran where an economic crisis has impoverished millions of people, while the government has failed to reach a nuclear deal with the West, which could end economic sanctions imposed by the United States since 2018.

Catherine Colonna said on the sidelines of the United Nations' General Assembly in New York that "There will not be a better offer on the table and it's up to Iran to take the right decisions," adding that there are no initiatives underway to unblock the situation. 

She reiterated that it was up to Tehran to decide now because the window to find a solution was closing.

She added that the United States and its European partners have similar positions on Iran’s demand for the International Atomic Energy Agency to drop its probe over uranium traces at three previously undeclared sites in Iran, the contentious issue that seems to be stalling a final agreement. 

In two separate interviews ahead of leaving Monday for the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, where President Ebrahim Raisi is due to speak this week, he said Iran is ready to revive the agreement given guarantees that the United States and Europe will uphold it.

“If there were guarantees, then the Americans could not withdraw from the deal,” Raisi said. “The Americans broke their promises, they did it unilaterally…We cannot trust the Americans because of the behavior we have already seen from them.”

In two television interviews ahead of leaving Monday for the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, where he is due to speak this week, Raisi stressed Tehran’s lack of trust in both Washington and European states. This, he said, followed US withdrawal from the 2015 deal – the JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – and Europe’s failure to support Iran economically in the face of US ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions.

Speaking last Tuesday to America’s CBS in Tehran in an interview broadcast over ten minutes Sunday, and to Qatar’s al-Jazeera in a half-hour slot Friday in Samarkand during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, Raisi said that while Iran wanted to expand trade globally with sanctions lifted it was ready to emphasize links with other countries facing sanctions.

“If there were guarantees, then the Americans could not withdraw from the deal,” Raisi said. “The Americans broke their promises, they did it unilaterally…We cannot trust the Americans because of the behavior we have already seen from them.”

CBS billed the interview as Raisi’s “first with a western reporter” while Raisi might receive more media coverage while in New York.

Meeting Biden ‘not beneficial’

Asked about Iranian-Americans detained in Iran, Raisi referred to Iranian nationals imprisoned in the US “because they tried to circumvent sanctions.” He reiterated talks “between the two countries” on this “humanitarian issue” were possible aside from the nuclear talks.

Raisi ruled out a “face to face” meeting in New York with President Joe Biden, which he said “would not be beneficial” as Iran had “not witnessed in reality” any changes since the administration of President Donald Trump, who in 2018 withdrew the US from the nuclear agreement and imposed ‘maximum pressure.’ But Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani on Monday kept the door open to contacts during the UN summit.

Interviewer Lesley Stahl quizzed Raisi over 1988 prison executions, at time when the president was deputy prosecutor in Tehran. Raisi dismissed “allegations and claims made by a terrorist group” – the Mujahideen-e Khalq, whose members were most of those executed. CBS highlighted Amnesty International calling the executions as “a crime against humanity.”

Quizzed over the Jewish holocaust and Israel’s “right to exist,” Raisi evaded the question by bringing up the rights of Palestinians “forced to leave their homes and motherland,” and said Israel’s accords with some Arab states meant those states “were stabbing the very idea of Palestine in the back.” He also called for “justice” over the “heinous crime” of the US 2020 killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.

Building confidence

Raisi’s interview with Jazeera focused on Iran’s strategy in looking to expand ties with other SCO members – China, India, the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Russia Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan – to create “balance” and as a bulwark against current or future US sanctions.

“Those who are violators of their commitment, they need to build confidence again,” he said. Asked over 40 years of poor relations with the US, Raisi evoked US support for the ‘terrorist’ MEK, for Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 war, its 1988 shooting down of the civilian Iran Air Flight 655, and decades of sanctions – all of which he called a “very long list.”

In fact, the Soviet Union rendered greater support to Iraq with large arms shipments, but the Islamic Republic maintained ties with Moscow and later expanded relations. Also, there is no evidence of the US administrations having helped the MEK, although some US lawmakers support the organization.