Iran not expected to agree to new EU proposal to salvage nuclear pact
European official: “This summer is when things start going downhill”
European Union diplomat: “We are trying to bridge remaining differences through all possible means, but no progress so far.”
European official: The “Iranians are stuck, or are pushing on, several unrealistic asks.”
On updated EU proposal, “I'm almost certain that it will fall short of Iran's expectations,” Crisis Group’s Ali Vaez. “If the Iranians were looking for a face-saving way out, the proposal would meet that criteria. But I don't think that's the case. So unfortunately, I don't think this last ditch effort is going to salvage the JCPOA.”
“I think the administration faces real practical and political limits what it can do, and what it is willing to do, on a Plan B situation,” Eurasia Group’s Henry Rome.
American and European diplomats and experts are gloomy about prospects that Iran will agree to a final compromise text on reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that the European Union presented to the parties this week.
“We are trying to bridge remaining differences through all possible means, but no progress so far,” a European Union diplomat said Thursday.
The “Iranians are stuck or are pushing on several unrealistic asks--including ‘we will not return to JCPOA until [IAEA Director General Rafael] Grossi closes all files,’” another official with one of the European parties to the nuclear pact, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, said. “Everyone is looking elsewhere, but this summer is when things start going downhill.”
“To my understanding, the proposal contains slight revisions, and does not contain any substantive concessions from either side. And so, I'm almost certain that it will fall short of Iran's expectations,” Ali Vaez, director of the Iran program at the International Crisis Group, said Thursday (July 28th).
“If the Iranians were looking for a face-saving way out, the proposal would meet that criteria,” Vaez said. “But I don't think that's the case. So unfortunately, I don't think this last ditch effort is going to salvage the JCPOA.”
The State Department said it is reviewing the updated proposal from EU High Commissioner Josep Borrell; but said to date it has been Iran, and not the United States, that has not been willing to say yes to the deal on the table since March.
“It is our understanding that the proposal that Mr. Borrell put forward was based on the deal that has been on the table, that was painstakingly negotiated…that we have been prepared to accept since March,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told journalists at the State Department on Thursday (July 28). “We have not been the cause of that [holdup]. There has been one country that has prevented a return to compliance with the JCPOA. That is Iran.”
“What we have not seen from Iran, whether in March or in the ensuing months, is an indication from them that they are prepared to make that political decision necessary to return to compliance,” Price said. “That’s why we’ve continued to prepare equally for scenarios where we have a JCPOA, scenarios in which we don’t have a JCPOA.”
Limits to executing Plan B
The Eurasia Group’s Henry Rome said he believes both Iran and the United States, as well as the other parties, may see big risks in declaring the JCPOA dead yet.
Amid US/Euro pessimism “that the prospect for a deal continues to decline,… there is a strong interest still on the Iranian side, as well as on the American side, in not delivering the last rites yet,” Rome said.
“I think for Iran there are lots of benefits to keep this going,” Rome said. For Iran, the continued ‘Vienna talks’—(even in the absence of new talks or outcome)—“supports domestic markets, allows it to play on the global stage, provides cover for nuclear expansion,” he said.
“And I think for the U.S., the biggest thing declaring JCPOA as failed would mean is that it would need to…execute a Plan B, and I think there is very little interest in going down that route.”
“I think the administration faces real practical and political limits what it can do, and what it is willing to do, on a Plan B situation,” Rome said.
“The obvious target is to go after Iranian oil and petrochemical exports, which Treasury has done a bit of,” Rome said. But the US has other global objectives, he noted, including pressuring Russia over its war on Ukraine, that may make tightening Iran sanctions a secondary priority.
Russia and China shift
The Crisis Group’s Vaez also sees Iranian calculations affected by Russia’s war on Ukraine.
“The Iranians believe that with this coming winter, the Europeans will be so desperate for Iranian oil and gas, given concerns about Russian supplies to Europe, and so concerned about Iran’s nuclear advancement, that they would put pressure on the US to make concessions that it has been reluctant to make so far,” Vaez said.
“And I think the US believes that with time, Iran would realize its economic situation will only get worse under sanctions and Russia and China can’t do more to basically throw Iran a lifeline,” he said. “But we are really at the mercy of a single miscalculation.”
Vaez saw signs that Russia and China may be recalculating their interest in seeing the Iran nuclear deal revived, and prefer instead for now for the U.S. to have to contend with managing the unstable status quo.
“I am starting to think that in the realities of the new world, Russia and China might have a different threshold for concern than was the case in the past,” Vaez said. “Their threshold is probably weaponization.”
“Both of these countries would probably welcome a crisis that would bog down the U.S. in the Middle East, and divert its attention from Russia and China – as long as Iran does not join the nuclear club,” he said.
Notably, there was no mention of the JCPOA or the Iran nuclear issue at all in a Chinese state news agency report on a phone call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi Friday (July 29).
The European Leadership Network’s Sahil Shah urged Iran to take the deal, even with uncertainty about what a new US president might do.
“Iran stands to lose the most from any of the alternatives to the JCPOA, including potentially becoming more diplomatically and economically isolated,” Shah said. “It should quickly seize the economic benefits the deal offers and use them to build further resilience regardless of what the future might hold.”
**