After five months of standstill, Iran and Western powers this Monday (29) resumed negotiations on the nuclear agreement that establishes control mechanisms in Tehran’s atomic program, with the country trying to lift international sanctions amid widespread skepticism.
The initial expectation was to save the 2015 agreement, which was abandoned by former president Donald Trump in 2018, and has since been violated by Iran — which claims to want to enrich uranium only for civil uses. Diplomats from Iran, the UK, China, Germany, Russia and France are present, but the talks at heart are indirect negotiations between Tehran and Washington, as the country refuses to sit at the table with a US emissary.
Iran’s negotiating team has set demands that American and European diplomats consider unrealistic, Western representatives involved said. The country is demanding to include the suspension of all sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union since 2017, including those unrelated to Iran’s nuclear program.
Ahead of the Vienna meeting, US envoy on Iran issues Rob Malley said Tehran’s attitude “doesn’t point to anything good for the talks.” “If Iran thinks it can buy time to increase its influence and then come back saying it wants something better, it just won’t work. We and our partners are not going to accept that,” Malley said in an interview with the BBC.
At first, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Said Khatibzadeh said that if “the United States arrives in Vienna with a determination to get out of the dead end and overcome the problems we didn’t agree with in previous negotiations, the road dialogue will be clearly easier.”
“But in an article published in the Financial Times on Sunday, the country’s top nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, was more incisive. “To ensure that any future deal is consistent, the West must pay a price for not keeping its part of the deal. As with any deal, a deal is a deal, and breaking it has consequences,” he wrote.
Six rounds of indirect talks took place between April and June, when negotiators ended the first phase of the talks on a positive note and said they were close to an agreement. The perspective changed with the coming to power of Iranian ultra-conservative President Ebrahim Raisi. After that, the country ignored for months the calls of Western countries to resume the dialogues, while strengthening its nuclear program.
The 2015 agreement, known as the Joint Global Action Plan (JCPOA), called for lifting some economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for strict limits on its nuclear program. After Trump pulled the US out of the pact, Iran began pushing the boundaries of nuclear activity. In recent months, the country has begun enriching uranium at unprecedented levels and has restricted the activities of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN body responsible for overseeing Iranian installations.
IAEA director Rafael Grossi visited Tehran last week with the hope of broaching several points of disagreement between the agency and Iran. Not to make matters worse, Western diplomats decided not to press for a critical Iran resolution last week during the IAEA council of ministers meeting.
The US government, however, said it would call a special board meeting if the stagnation continued. “Iran’s reluctance to reach a relatively clear commitment to the IAEA is negative for the next dialogue,” said Henry Rome, an expert with the Eurasia group.
“The status of Iranian nuclear advances is increasingly precarious,” said Kelsey Davenport, an expert at the Arms Control Association. Davenport told reporters last week that “although the Trump government fabricated this crisis, Iran’s actions are prolonging it.”
Of great concern to the IAEA is a centrifuge component manufacturing facility in Karaj, near Tehran. The IAEA has not had access to the facility since its cameras were damaged in an “act of sabotage” in June. Iran accused Israel of attacking the plant.
“In case of breaches in IAEA monitoring, this will spark rumors that Iran has engaged in illegal activities, that it has a secret program, with or without evidence,” said Davenport, who warned that this could “undermine the prospects of maintaining the I wake up”.
Iran’s main enemy, Israel, which opposed the original agreement saying it was too limited in scope and duration, said military options will be on the table if diplomacy fails. “They [os iranianos] they will buy time, make billions from the removal of sanctions, continue to deceive the world and secretly promote their nuclear program,” Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid told reporters in London.
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