Crunch time at Iran talks Vienna; EU working on a compromise package
If no deal on restoring Iran nuclear pact reached, U.S. and European powers could move to censure Iran at IAEA Board of Governors meeting on March 7.
The European Union coordinator Enrique Mora is working on a compromise package after the United States and five world powers agreed this past weekend on a nearly-final package on restoring US and Iranian full compliance with the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which was presented to Iran, diplomatic sources tell me.
There have been back and forth consultations since then, evidently informing the EU coordinating team’s work on a compromise package.
“We need more time to finalize next week,” a second negotiator at the talks told me today. “Not all issues have been settled yet.”
In the coming days, (seemingly by the end of the month, at least before an IAEA board meeting March 7), the sense is that either a compromise package is agreed; or, alternatively, if it seems that Iran is still holding out for what the West considers unfeasible demands (such as for some sort of guarantees that a future US administration won’t leave the deal that the U.S. says it cannot provide), the US and E3 parties could walk away from the table, in the hope that nudges the Iranians out of intransigence, one source described.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was fairly circumspect in comments about the negotiations in a speech he gave today, referencing his earlier skepticism the West would live up to a deal, but seemingly not shutting the door to one. He praised the Iranian negotiating team for pursuing sanctions relief, but said Iran should build up its domestic capabilities to neutralize sanctions. He also asserted Iran does not seek nuclear weapons, but the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
“Our good brothers are busy in removing sanctions,” he said, presumably referring to his negotiating team in Vienna. “That’s also good, but the major issue is neutralizing them.”
Public statements from the Iranians, Europeans, Russians and Chinese in recent days indicate there is consensus that a prospective deal is within reach, but Iranian and western parties disagree on who should be making the final decisions to clinch an understanding.
“We have reached a tipping point now,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told French parliament on Wednesday (Feb. 16). “It’s not a matter of weeks; it’s a matter of days.”
“Political decisions are needed from the Iranians,” Le Drian continued. “Either they trigger a serious crisis in the coming days, or they accept the agreement which respects the interests of all parties.”
“After weeks of intensive talks, we are closer than ever to an agreement,” Iran’s top negotiator in Vienna, Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri (or Bagheri-Kani), wrote on Twitter Feb. 16.
“Our negotiating partners need to be realistic, avoid intransigence, and heed lessons of the past four years,” Bagheri continued. “Time for their serious decisions.”
Reuters, citing three diplomats familiar with the negotiations, reported today that a draft text of the agreement “stipulates a sequence of steps to be implemented once it has been approved by the remaining parties to the deal, starting with a phase including Iran suspending enrichment about 5% purity.”
The text, over 20 pages long, “also alludes to other measures that diplomats say include unfreezing about $7 billion in Iranian funds stuck in South Korean banks…as well as the release of Western prisoners held in Iran.”
“Only once that initial wave of measures has been taken and confirmed, would the main phase of sanctions-lifting begin, culminating in what many diplomats call Re-Implementation Day,” the report said. It said officials estimate the time it would take to complete the steps between reaching an understanding and Re-Implementation Day is between one and three months.
Iranian officials and the Russian negotiator seemingly rejected aspects of the report, suggesting it contained spin from potential spoilers to a deal.
“Misinformation disguised as reporting is dangerous,” the spokesman for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Saeed Khatizbadeh tweeted. “The final deal to let US return to JCPOA will be far from the unsourced spin making rounds. It won’t be a bilateral agreement either. Expect more spin as we approach final days.”
Russia’s chief negotiator in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov also disputed aspects of the report, telling Iran International reporter Niloofar Pourebrahim that the draft text on restoring the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) does not explicitly refer to a prisoner release or prisoner swap.
U.S. officials have repeatedly said that the release of US prisoners being held by Iran is being handled on a separate, but parallel track to the nuclear talks, given the risk that a deal on restoring the nuclear pact may not be reached. Chief US negotiator Rob Malley has also said it would be hard to imagine a restoration of the JCPOA without a release of US citizens being detained by Iran.
Then US President Trump quit the Iran nuclear pact in 2018 and imposed “maximum pressure” in the form of crippling economic sanctions on Iran. In respose, Iran since 2019 has been progressively exceeding the deal’s nuclear limits to protest the lack of sanctions relief it was entitled to under the deal. The Biden administration has sought since late February 2021 to reach an understanding with Iran on what steps each side would take for the US to return to the deal and Iran to return to its full implementation, but the negotiations were interrupted by Iranian elections in June that brought in a new Iranian administration even more distrustful of the U.S. and Europe.
A key forthcoming event in the Iran talks calendar, particularly if an understanding on restoring the deal is not yet reached, is the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of governors meeting, which is due to start on March 7.
An Israeli delegation led by the head of the Israeli Foreign Ministry strategic department Joshua Zarka visited Vienna earlier this week and held consultations with all the Iran talks negotiating parties, save for Iran, as well as with IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi.
Former Israeli Defense Forces analyst Shemuel Meir suggested that a main goal of the Israeli delegation’s consultations in Vienna this week was to try to prepare the ground for a resolution censuring Iran at that upcoming IAEA board meeting for its lack of cooperation in answering questions on suspected pre-2003 nuclear work.
“In my reading, the goal of the Israeli delegation to Vienna was to prepare the ground for anti-Iran resolution in the coming IAEA Board meeting around the un-declared sites of the past (prior to 2003),” Meir wrote on Twitter. “To gain support for such a resolution.”
Ali Vaez, director of the Iran program at the International Crisis Group, wrote in a Twitter thread today that if an understanding on restoring the deal is not reached soon, he foresaw the likelihood that Washington and the three European parties (E3) to the deal, Britain, France and Germany, possibly pivoting to censure Iran for the impasse at the IAEA Board meeting.
“I have yet to see tangible signs that substantive gaps have narrowed,” Vaez wrote. “Is it possible that differences can be bridged? Yes…But when officials say ‘closer than ever,’ that doesn’t necessarily mean ‘close.’”
The “time crunch is real,” he continued. An “IAEA quarterly report is expected soon, the [IAEA Board of Governors meet] on 7 March.”
If no deal is agreed by then, what he sees as likely, he wrote, “is a quick shift to a two-prong US/E3 approach,” involving a censure resolution at the Board of Governors meeting, with or without Russian and Chinese votes. That could be followed by a UN Security Council referral, including the potential for the E3 to trigger the snapback mechanism.
European Union and Russian officials have suggested they do not plan to break their work in Vienna for the Munich Security Conference this weekend, though it seems some officials in Vienna, and attention, may drift there. “Work will continue,” a European diplomat told me.
The State Department, meantime, said Wednesday that it would not expect US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to meet Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in Munich, but reiterated that the U.S. would welcome direct talks with Iran in the context of Vienna.
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