The US and Iran have taken a cautious, first step in reviving the 2015 nuclear deal after the first full day of indirect diplomatic meetings in Vienna, Austria.
But it was a small move at best. It does not guarantee that both parties will return to compliance with the terms of the treaty, which then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the US in 2018.
The Vienna meetings involved all the signatories of the nuclear agreement – Iran, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom and Germany – as well as the European Union. But the US and Iran did not speak directly to each other because Iran refused to do so. On the contrary, they each met separately with the other parties and communicated with each other through European intermediaries.
Tension is high, and neither party wants to look like it is for the other one. The optics are so important that the US delegation, led by a special envoy for Iran, Rob Malley, ended up at a hotel opposite the hotel where the Iranians held their meetings, and required European diplomats to commute back and forth .
Even with these complications, the US and Iran struck a small bargain: they set up two working groups that are considered progress by diplomatic standards.
The first working group will examine how the US can return to compliance with the agreement, namely by lifting the sanctions that the Trump administration has imposed on Iran after the US withdrew. The second one will investigate how Iran can return to compliance, and require it to limit its nuclear program again.
“As a broad step forward,” Department of State spokesman Ned Price told reporters on Tuesday that this modest agreement was “a welcome step, it’s a constructive step, it’s a potentially useful step. . ‘ ‘
Analysts I spoke to acknowledged that this initial step may not seem like much, as it is merely a process of discussing how both countries can once again comply with the agreement.
But “the fact that talks have continued on a technical level shows that political leaders on both sides agree on the general contours of the road map needed for Iran and the US to reconcile,” said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, a visiting fellow at the European, said Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).
The challenge now is for all parties in Vienna to draw a clear path forward in the approximately ten days they have left. This is no easy thing.
The US and Iran still face obstacles to re-entering the agreement
Experts I spoke to said that it would be easier for the US and Iran to comply with the terms of the nuclear deal again than to sign the treaty in the first place six years ago.
But that does not mean it will be easy.
“The obstacles to a quick fix are important,” said Dina Esfandiary, a senior Middle East adviser to the International Crisis Group.
Here are just three of these obstacles: to ensure that Iran scales back its nuclear program; agree on what economic sanctions the US should lift, and who should go first; and find out all this before the upcoming Iranian election begins.
Let’s start with the first one. Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for Iran, said on Wednesday that his country had enriched 55 kilograms of uranium to 20 percent, compared to about 17 kilograms in January.
Uranium enriched up to 20 percent is considered ‘highly enriched’, but it is far from the 90 percent enrichment needed to make nuclear material for a bomb. Iran then moved slightly closer – but still not particularly close – to actually having enough material to make a nuclear weapon.
However, the 2015 nuclear deal limited Iran’s uranium enrichment to 3.67 percent and banned the country from storing more than 300 kilograms of material.
To continue the agreement, the US wants Iran to prove that it has not enriched uranium to such a high level and that it has reduced the supply of the material to the level set in the 2015 agreement. is. This will require international inspectors to verify Iran’s compliance through activities such as accessing footage from cameras in certain nuclear facilities or even visiting persons in person, which takes time.
The second barrier is a matter of order: should the US lift its sanctions before reconciling Iran, or should Iran prove that it follows the rules before the financial penalties return? Neither party wants to move at first, experts say, and this is an important fixed point.
A related issue is exactly what sanctions the US should remove. Tehran wants to lift virtually every sanction against it in exchange for complying with the nuclear deal, while the Biden government only wants to consider fines related to Iran’s nuclear efforts. According to analysts, it will be difficult to make a bargain on it.
‘The technical challenges of easing sanctions and restoring Iran’s nuclear program are, in a sense, less difficult than the political challenge of the win-win logic of the [nuclear deal] prevails over the zero-sum logic of leverage and coercion, ”said Batmanghelidj of ECFR.
And the third barrier is a matter of scheduling. Iran has a presidential election in June. President Hassan Rouhani, who has negotiated the original deal and made a large part of his political fortune on its success, is on the verge of being curtailed, and hardliners are fighting for his office which will soon be vacated. It is possible that the next government will not be as comfortable with the nuclear deal as this one.
“The Supreme Leader may still decide that it would be wiser to wait until a new government is in place in Iran before continuing with the United States,” Esfandiary told me.
However, the US does not seem to be worried about that. “We will negotiate with whoever is in power in Iran,” Malley, the US envoy to Iran, said in an NPR interview on Tuesday. “And if we could come to an understanding before the election, then that’s fine. And if we can not, then we will continue with whoever is in office in Tehran. ”
“So we can not ignore the reality of an election, but we can also not allow it to determine our pace,” Malley added.
There are other issues at stake, namely the desire of the Biden government to negotiate Iran’s missile program and support for terrorism and Tehran’s continued resistance to it. These problems can arise, among other things, if there is another full meeting between officials on Friday.
But developments this week show that at least both sides are still talking, instead of walking away from the table. This is progress, albeit rare.