WASHINGTON – While White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki denied on Monday that US involvement in a Sunday blast that damaged an Iranian nuclear power plant hampered the Biden government’s efforts to bring the Tehran government back to the negotiating table .
“The next rounds of core discussions would always be difficult, but it has only gotten harder,” Eric Brewer, deputy director and senior fellow of the Project on Nuclear Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in an email to Yahoo writing. News.
Early on Sunday, the Natanz nuclear power plant, especially known as the earlier target of a joint US-Israeli cyberattack in 2010 called Stuxnet, suffered an eclipse or power outage due to a major explosion. The attack on Sunday, whether through digital sabotage or pure physical destruction, has been linked to Israeli journalists by Israeli journalists, amid pressure urged by Israeli officials in recent years to make more public about its actions against Iran.
Iranian officials took revenge on Israel on Monday as Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s nuclear energy organization, described the eclipse as an act of “nuclear terrorism”. The attack came just a day after Iran celebrated its “National Nuclear Technology Day” and unveiled nearly 200 new advanced centrifuges.
“The United States was not involved in this at all,” Psaki said in a White House press release Monday, reiterating what anonymous U.S. officials had earlier told reporters, “We have seen reports of an incident at the Natanz enrichment facility in Iran.” but ‘the United States had no involvement, and we have nothing to add to speculation about the causes. ”
After the aftermath of the presidency inherited Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran, including the targeted assassination of Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani, the failure of the nuclear deal and the imposition of tough sanctions, Biden’s government will have to find out how to escalate tensions to bring Iran back to the negotiating table to get the deal negotiated under former President Obama started.
U.S. diplomats are in the very early stages of negotiating with Iran to revive and perhaps strengthen the Obama-era joint action plan, or the JCPOA, and an agreement that reflects Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons temporarily restricted and gave independent permission inspections before being dropped by President Trump in May 2018.
Last week, U.S. government officials, including Special Envoy Rob Malley, as well as senior Iranian officials met with third-party negotiators, led by the European Union and included Russia and China, to begin preliminary talks on what it would take to bring parties back to the agreement.
With the looming election in Iran, officials in Tehran have so far refused to meet directly with US counterparts. The Biden government has nevertheless expressed optimism for a process that, according to its officials, will be long and complicated. “Overall, discussions have been productive,” a senior administration official told reporters on Friday. “There are still questions about whether Iran has the willingness to do what it will take to follow the pragmatic approach that the United States has taken to meet its obligations under the agreement again.”
Meanwhile, Iran’s chief negotiator said the talks were “on track” and that the three parties would meet in Vienna later this week.
One of the key questions during the first meetings, Brewer told Yahoo News, was whether Iran would be willing to reconcile without the US removing all sanctions from the Trump era, which could potentially leave the door open. for a more robust agreement with fewer concessions. The lifting of sanctions remained the main point of contention in Vienna, which allegedly caused a potential impasse.
“Now, after the Israeli attack on Natanz, it seems quite unlikely to move forward without sanction relief,” Brewer wrote.
In addition, the attack on Natanz could provide additional excuses for Iran to deter diplomacy, especially if the senior leaders believe or argue that the US was in some way involved or played a role in approving Israel. see performance.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin made his first trip to Israel over the weekend just before the attack. he celebrated “Defense cooperation between the US and Israel” and declares its commitment to “continue our close consultations on threats to Iran and to strengthen Israel’s security”. It is unclear whether Austin was made aware of Israel’s plan to attack Natanz. Yet the urgency that the White House has placed on denying an active role and attributing the action to Israel is parallel to the Biden team’s preference for diplomacy.
“There is very little the US can do here other than to file objections,” Brewer said.
Nevertheless, the lack of comment or condemnation of Israel’s actions from the White House may give the impression that the US is not fulfilling its commitment to implementing global standards of engagement, especially with its partners in the Middle East. “Saudis block Yemen, which has already been devastated by famine. Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear sites amid sensitive P5 + 1 Iran diplomacy. It is unclear how these steps by client states help the US to strengthen a ‘rules-based international order’. “ tweeted Matt Duss, Senator Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy adviser, who almost accepted a role in Biden’s state department before deciding he would be more influential outside government.
Either way, the Biden team will have to determine how Israel’s actions are to be recorded or responded to.
In addition to the explosion on Natanz on Sunday, Israel has also been linked to a series of explosions at various nuclear enrichment sites this past summer, as well as the assassination of top Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in November 2020.
According to the analysis by Dalia Dassa Kaye, a Wilson Center Fellow and former director of the Center for Middle East policy at the RAND Corporation, these types of Israeli attacks fit into the country’s “Octopus Doctrine” aimed at directly targeting Iranian interests to attack rather than limit it. them to his proxy like Hezbollah. As Kaye wrote in a piece last summer, Israel’s target on Iran’s nuclear facilities was not always strategically successful, and may even have led to an acceleration of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
“The question is, what message is the Biden government sending to Israel?” she wrote in a tweet Sunday night. “It is unlikely that the US will welcome such attacks at this sensitive time in diplomacy.” Regardless, she concluded, given Israel’s contempt for the JCPOA as it currently stands, the US should expect more Israeli resistance.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, entangled in his own domestic political challenges, has told journalists over the past few days that Israel will not tolerate an agreement that ‘threatens us with extinction’. He described the nuclear deal as “worthless”, as an “extreme regime” was being marketed in Iran. Meanwhile, Iran itself is dealing with its own challenges and opportunities. As Senator Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Remarked on Tuesday, Iran has resigned its nuclear research, allowed its proxies to attack U.S. troops again, and a wedge in between the US and its allies. The Trump administration’s lifting of the agreement and the Sunday attack give Iranian officials discussion points to condemn attempts at diplomacy.
However, Iran is also facing crippling sanctions, the coronavirus pandemic, additional economic challenges and the loss of both its top military officials and nuclear scientists, noted Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Despite the latest attack and the impending election, it is still in Iran’s interest to get sanctions eased, he told Yahoo News.
“I think there will be a tendency to misuse Iranian negotiating resilience or steadfastness or to use the latest source of pressure against them, which could be Israeli covert action or Biden’s sanctions,” Taleblu said. But I think it misses the forest for the trees. “I do not think it will contribute to Iran not negotiating,” he said.
“If sanctions continue to exist, even the far – right flank in Iran will have the honor of defeating the ‘great Satan’ at the negotiating table,” Taleblu concluded.
____
Read more from Yahoo News: