According to a senior adviser at a US think tank, Washington and Tehran will eventually be able to conclude a nuclear deal because Iran needs relief from economic sanctions.
“I think in the end an agreement is possible because the Iranians need money,” said Richard Goldberg of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
The US and Iran both appear to be interested in returning to the negotiating table, but could not agree on who should take the first step. The Biden government last week offered to start Tehran, but Iran has repeatedly stressed that the US should lift sanctions to begin the process. Washington has resisted the calls so far.
In addition, Iran’s new agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is “definitely not useful” and falls short of what was previously allowed, Goldberg said.
The Iranian parliament has passed a law blocking IAEA inspections, but both parties said on Sunday that “necessary verification and monitoring activities” could continue for up to three months.
Tan Feng Qin of the National University of Singapore’s Middle Eastern Institute said Iran is aware that preventing inspections could have disadvantages.
The three-month postponement “gives some space and some time for the US and Iran to try to work out the solution to the sequence problem”, he told CNBC’s “Capital Connection”.
Goldberg also remains optimistic that an agreement can be reached.
“Everything you see, all the threats, the terrorism, threats in the Gulf, seizure of tankers, the nuclear program, taking hostages, these are all different extortion tactics to get money and get sanction relief,” he told CNBC “Squawk Box Asia “on Monday. “That means an agreement is possible.”
Iran’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment from CNBC.
Sanctions that hurt Iran’s economy
Heavy sanctions against Iran – imposed by the Trump administration after withdrawing from the 2015 agreement – have been devastating to Tehran’s economy.
According to the IMF, this was the last time Iran saw its GDP grow in 2017, and the Islamic Republic only had access to $ 8.8 billion in foreign exchange reserves last year. That is lower than $ 12.7 billion in 2019 and $ 121.6 billion in 2018.
“They are suffering from the sanctions imposed by President Trump, the so-called maximum pressure campaign,” Goldberg said.
“It is clear that they need access to money, that they need sanctions relief and that they want to drive a crisis to try to force Biden’s hand to get into a kind of conversation that includes sanctions relief,” he added.
However, there are still questions about what the deal will look like.
Iran has said its violations of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) are reversible and can be reversed. But Goldberg disagrees.
“There are many steps that are not reversible,” he said. “The technical knowledge they have acquired to test advanced centrifuges is something we can not put back in the bottle.”
He also pointed out that the agreement was accompanied by the expiration dates for combating Iran’s nuclear program.
‘Since [the JCPOA is] is already five years old, in any case we are not in the period in which the agreement is to Iran’s advantage, so it is a big question whether the government of Biden and their European and Asian allies want to return to an agreement or simply hold out and negotiate a new agreement, ‘he said.