BRUSSELS – On Tuesday in Vienna, the signatories of the Iran nuclear deal in 2015 will work together on a simple task. They want to restore compliance with an agreement that strictly controls Iran’s nuclear enrichment, to ensure that it cannot build a nuclear weapon, in exchange for lifting the penalty of economic sanctions.
Both Iran and the United States insist they want to return to the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. But nothing about the meeting will be simple.
President Donald J. Trump pulled the United States out of the agreement in May 2018, calling it ‘the worst deal ever negotiated’, repairing and improving the harsh economic sanctions against Iran, and trying to force him to renegotiate .
Iran has responded in part by significantly enriching uranium beyond the bounds of the agreement, building more advanced centrifuges and acting more aggressively in support of allies in the Middle East, such as Hezbollah, Hamas, Shia militias in Iraq and Syria. government of Bashar al-. Assad.
Returning to an agreement reached six years ago is therefore likely to be more difficult than many people realize.
What are the talks about?
The Vienna talks are intended to create a roadmap for a synchronized return of Iran and the United States to compliance with the 2015 agreement. It has the danger of collapsing, since Mr. Trump rejected the US participation.
The agreement was the result of years of negotiations with Iran. Under the presidency of the European Union, Britain, France and Germany held the first openings to Iran, along with the other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: Russia, China and the United States.
But only when the United States began secret talks with Iran under President Barack Obama and agreed that Iran could enrich uranium, albeit under protection, did a breakthrough take place. Even then, the agreement was widely criticized as too weak by many in Congress and by Israel, who saw Iran’s potential reach for a nuclear weapon – a pursuit always denied by Iran – as an existential threat.
The Europeans tried to keep the agreement alive, but could not deliver the economic benefits to Iran, after Trump restored US sanctions lifted under the terms of the agreement. The US sanctions, based on the global power of the dollar and the US banking system, have prevented European and other companies from doing business with Iran, and Mr. Trump has intensified the pressure by adding many more sanctions.
Iran has responded in various ways, including attacks on shipping and on US allies in Iraq, but more importantly by resuming uranium enrichment at a higher level and banning centrifuges under the agreement. The estimated time it would take Iran to produce enough enriched uranium to produce a nuclear weapon has now shrunk from a year, which wanted to keep the agreement, to just a few months. Iran also needs uranium metal for a nuclear deal, which is also banned under the agreement, and aggressively supports allies in the Middle East, many of whom in the West are considered terrorist groups.
In a further press tactic, Iran carefully interpreted the inspection requirements of the agreement and did not want to answer questions from the International Atomic Energy Agency about radioactive particles found by inspectors at sites never declared by Tehran as part of the nuclear program. . Iran agreed in late February to keep information about its inspection equipment for three months, but without the IAEA granting access. If economic sanctions are not lifted at that time, Iran says, the information will be removed, leaving the world in the dark about key parts of the nuclear program.
Iran insists it can return to the agreement quickly, but wants the United States to do so first. Biden’s government says it wants Iran to go first.
What are the obstacles?
Trust is a big issue. The Iranian regime was founded more than four decades ago by a revolution that replaced the US-backed Shah of Iran with a complicated government supervised by clerics and the strong hand of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The ayatollah only reluctantly agreed to the 2015 agreement with the “Great Satan” of America. Nadat mnr. Trump pulled out, Mr. Khamenei’s distrust only deepens.
Mr. Trump has also imposed many economic sanctions on Iran than those originally lifted by the agreement, and is trying to ‘maximize pressure’ to force Iran to negotiate much stricter conditions. Iranian officials now say up to 1,600 US sanctions should be lifted, about half of which were by Mr. Trump is introduced. Some are aimed at terrorism and human rights violations, not core issues. The removal of some of them would create opposition in Congress.
Many in Washington, let alone in Israel and Europe, also do not believe Iran’s claims that it has never pursued and would never pursue a nuclear weapon.
Restoring the agreement complicates the “sunset” clauses, or time constraints, that allow Iran to resume certain nuclear enrichment activities. The Biden government wants further negotiations with Iran to extend the time constraints, as well as to limit Iran’s missile program and other activities.
Iran says it simply wants the United States to return to the agreement it left behind, including lifting sanctions, before returning. It has so far rejected any further talks.
Even under the Islamic regime, Iran also has politics. There are presidential elections in June, with candidates approved by the clergy. The current president, Hassan Rouhani, who is unable to run for another term, and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif are considered relatively moderate and negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal. But powerful forces in Iran opposed the agreement, including the Islamic Revolutionary Corps. The moderates hope that rapid progress in lifting economic sanctions will help them in the presidential election; the hard rig is expected to oppose any swift agreement in Vienna that could benefit the moderates.
Iran has been living with harsh Trump sanctions for three years now and has survived popular discontent and even protests, and runners-up will argue that another six months is unlikely to matter.
How will the conversations be structured?
The meeting of senior diplomats is formally a session of the Joint Committee of the Agreement, chaired by the European Union. Since the United States has left the agreement, its representatives will not be in the room, but somewhere nearby. Diplomats from Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and Iran will meet with a president of the European Union and begin discussions on how to revive the agreement.
Iran refuses to meet face-to-face with US diplomats. The Europeans therefore suggest that they meet the Americans with suggestions, or that the Iranians leave the room before the Americans enter. This process of indirect conversations can take time.
But European diplomats say that after a few days in Vienna, the work will be left to working groups on complex political and technical issues. If a rough agreement can be reached on a synchronized return to compliance, it is expected that officials from Iran and the United States will meet to finalize the details.
What is the prospect of success?
The talks could last a long time, and some in Washington are at least hoping for an agreement in principle in the next few months that will bind any new Iranian government after the June election.
But some European diplomats fear that too much time has already passed, and that the agreement is effectively dead, and will essentially serve as a reference point for a fundamental new negotiation.
The timeline is therefore unclear, as is the prospect of success.