State: Iran ‘killed the opportunity’ to swiftly revive nuclear pact
“It is certainly the case that the Iranians killed the opportunity for a swift return to mutual compliance with the JCPOA,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said.
American officials today downplayed video remarks of President Biden in November interacting in California with an Iranian American woman urging him to declare the Iran nuclear deal dead. U.S. officials said today it was the Iranians who killed the opportunity to swiftly revive the deal in early September, even before widespread demonstrations erupted in Iran to protest the death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iran’s so-called morality police.
“It is certainly the case that the Iranians killed the opportunity for a swift return to mutual compliance with the JCPOA,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told journalists at the department press briefing today (Dec. 20), using the acronym for the formal name of the 2015 pact, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
“They killed that opportunity…most recently in September, when, again, we were on the precipice, we thought, of a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA, all the other parties had agreed,” Price said. “But instead of putting us in a position go forward, the Iranians reneged.”
The comments came as European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and his deputy Enrique Mora met with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and Deputy Foreign Minister and lead Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri in Amman, Jordan today, on the sidelines of the Baghdad Summit.
“It was difficult,” a Western diplomat said of the EU Iran meeting. “No avenue open as long as they are militarily supporting Russia.”
US officials said they welcomed the European efforts, but said recent history made them skeptical that the meetings might augur revived prospects for meaningful progress on nuclear diplomacy.
“There’s a track record,” the State Department’s Price said. “The track record that we’ve seen over the past year and a half or so speaks to the fact that the Iranians have not, and may not ever be in a position, to move forward… Time and again, on several occasions now, we thought we were close….only to have the rug pulled out from under us by the Iranians.”
Then President Trump quit the Iran nuclear pact in 2018, and re-imposed harsh sanctions on Iran, though Iran had been complying. Iran in response has since 2019 been progressively exceeding the deal’s nuclear limits to protest the lack of sanctions relief it was receiving. The Biden administration has tried since shortly after coming into office in 2021 to revive the deal, but since September has expressed growing doubt that Iran is prepared to accept a mutual return.
NSC: We don’t anticipate any progress in the near future
“We simply don't see a deal coming together anytime soon, while Iran continues to kill its own citizens and is selling UAVs to Russia,” NSC strategic communications advisor John Kirby told journalists in a virtual gaggle earlier today.
“There is no progress happening with respect to the Iran deal now,” Kirby said. “We don't anticipate any progress anytime in the near future. That's just not our focus.”
His comments came in response to questions about a video circulated today in Iranian diaspora media and social media showing President Biden being asked in November not to make any deals with this Iranian government.
“President Biden, can you please announce that the JCPOA is dead,” the woman, who identified herself on Instagram as Sudi Farokhnia, acting president of Iranian American Democrats of California (IADCAL), asked Biden on Nov. 4, the video, posted by Damon Maghsoudi to Twitter, shows.
“No,” Biden responds, while shaking hands and trying to hear her over significant ambient music and noise. “For a lot of reasons. It is dead, but we’re not going to announce it. Long story, but we’re going to make sure….”
“We just don’t want any deals with the mullahs,” the woman interjects. “No deals. They don’t represent us. They’re not our government.”
“Oh, I know they don’t represent you,” Biden said. “But they’ll have a nuclear weapon that they’ll represent.”
“The administration needs to follow what the president has already acknowledged,” Farokhnia wrote on Instagram today, saying the encounter took place at a November 4 campaign event in Southern California.
White House schedules show that Biden, on a pre-midterms trip, spoke on Nov. 4 at the ViaSat communications firm, in Carlsbad, California, to promote legislation he supported to promote the domestic manufacture of semiconductors.
The encounter in the video occurred at an event in Oceanside, California, said Pooya Dayanim, a California-based Iranian American pro-democracy activist. “A large crowd of Iranian Americans attended his event and he kept addressing them at various times during the program,” Dayanim said.
US chastises UN for failure to investigate Russia’s acquisition of Iran drones
The sharpening US blame of Iran for failure to revive the Iran deal also comes as the US expressed regret that the UN has not more vigorously pursued US, European and Ukrainian requests to conduct a normal investigation of the Iranian shipment of hundreds of drones to Russia being used in its war on Ukraine, evidently due to Russian threats. The US charges this would be a violation of UN Security Council resolution 2231, dealing with Iranian nuclear and nonproliferation matters, not just by Iran, but by Russia.
“We regret that the UN has not moved to carry out a normal investigation of this reported violation,” US Ambassador and Alternative Representative for Special Political Affairs Robert Wood said at a UN Security Council briefing Monday (Dec. 19).
“We are disappointed that the [UN] Secretariat, apparently yielding to Russian threats, has not carried out the investigatory mandate this Council has given it,” Wood said. “We were also discouraged by the lack of coverage of these violations in the Facilitator’s Report on the Implementation of Resolution 2231.”
“Now, months after that initial report, we learned last week that Russia has resumed using Iranian drones procured in violation of Resolution 2231,” Wood continued. “Given Iran’s increasing integration into Russia’s defense sector, we fear additional violations in the future. Russia may even be tempted to further violate Resolution 2231 by importing complete ballistic missiles from Iran.”
“We strongly caution Iran against any further deliveries of weapons to Russia, in particular of any short-range ballistic missiles, which would constitute a serious escalation,” UK Ambassador to the UN Barbara Woodward said on behalf of the E3—the UK, France and Germany—after the Security Council meeting Monday. “We encourage the Secretary General to examine and report any evidence of transfers of items…inconsistent with UNSCR 2231.”
UN officials’ language on the matter is decidedly cryptic.
“The Secretariat is examining the available information and any findings will be reported to the Council, as appropriate, in due course,” UN Under Secretary General Rosemary DiCarlo told the Security Council meeting Monday.
The NSC’s Kirby said today the US and its allies and partners would continue to pursue accountability.
“We're just gonna let the [UN] Secretary General [Antonio] Guterres speak for his decision making,” Kirby said today. “We've been very clear that these are violations of 2231. It's plain to us looking at the language of 2231 that Iran is violating it…with respect specifically to their provision of drones to Russia.”
The deepening Russian-Iran defense collaboration “is only going to grow, simply because both countries are a pariah to much of the world, certainly much of the Western world,” Jonathan Panikoff, a former US intelligence official who now directs the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council, said in an interview. “And so it becomes easier to rely on each other.”
“I think even people like myself who were supportive of the deal originally, looking at the world now—at the [Iranian] protests or looking at the relationship between Russia and Iran--struggle to understand how we go back into the deal, as is and expect that it would have the ability to prevent Iran from continuing on the nuclear path,” Panikoff said.
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