“The question remains as to whether the seriousness of the purpose and the intention to return to the compliance shown by the US will be retaliated against by Iran,” the senior State Department said in a conference with reporters. “We saw some signs of it, but certainly not enough.”
Talks between the US and Iran, which are being conducted indirectly in Vienna with European intermediaries, were halted on Friday when teams from both sides returned to their capitals for consultations. Discussions are expected to resume next week, with important issues on what each country should do, and in what order, yet to be resolved.
The 2015 agreement was negotiated under former President Barack Obama’s government, and it involved several countries as well as aid from the European Union and the United Nations. It has lifted a range of US and international nuclear-related sanctions against Iran in exchange for serious crackdowns on Tehran’s nuclear program.
In 2018, citing many of the critics of the deal, Trump walked away from it. He reinstated the sanctions lifted under the agreement and also tackled new ones. Over time, Iran, in retaliation, began resuming some of its nuclear activities, including processing uranium to 20 percent purity.
Team President Joe Biden, who was sent to Vienna under the leadership of Special Envoy Rob Malley, looked at various options to return to the agreement, often referred to as the JCPOA by virtue of its official name, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Malley’s team sifted through the numerous sanctions imposed and reinstated on Iran during the Trump years. While many of the sanctions are clearly aimed at Iran’s nuclear program, Trump aides have deliberately classified other than other headlines, such as punishing Iran for its human rights record, its support for terrorism or its ballistic missile program. The Biden team must decide which sanctions are legally categorized, and what should be held, and which one was a covert attempt to punish Iran over its nuclear program, and should be lifted if the US returns to the agreement.
The senior State Department official pointed out that the original nuclear deal allowed the United States to sanction Iran on non-nuclear-related grounds. If the Biden team decides that a Trump-era sanction was legally imposed on those other grounds, it is not obligated to lift the sanction.
“There are some that are legal sanctions, even under very fair reading and careful reading” of the agreement, the senior State Department official said, declining to provide details.
On Friday, Zarif tweeted: “All Trump sanctions were anti-JCPOA and should be removed – without distinction between arbitrary names.” The senior State Department official said the tweet was unhelpful and suggested the Iranians were not serious about reviving the deal.
Zarif also tweeted that the United States should take the first step by removing sanctions because it caused the crisis when Trump left the deal. He added that Iran would move to ‘rapid verification’, an apparent reference to Iran to see if the lifting of sanctions had taken effect.
Thanks to the existence of organizations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency, there are ways to verify that Iran has ceased its nuclear activities. But Iranian officials did not specify what would suffice for them when it came to lifting the sanctions. Depending on what exactly the Iranians mean, it could become difficult, especially if Tehran wants proof that lifting the sanctions has an effect on its economy.
“We do not know exactly what this means” about sanction verification, the senior State Department official said. “We welcome more details on exactly what they have in mind.”
Ali Vaez, a leading Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, who has been in contact with both the US and Iranian sides, said the sanctions verification could become very complicated.
“As for the money in their bank accounts, I understand how you verify that,” Vaez said. ‘But what if a South Korean company that does not want to switch to a very different type of oil wants to switch to Iranian oil? Is it the USA’s fault? Would that be a sign of bad faith? It’s hard to answer. ”
Whoever takes what steps first is a tricky affair, but not impossible to figure out, Vaez and others said. This may amount to describing the movements. It Maybe ‘creative should be designed to be a step-by-step process so that it looks like one step,’ Vaez said. “It sounds like they will try to define it in one single step with different sections.”
For now, it looks like the Biden team wants to restore the original agreement, and it largely ignores outside criticism. But the scale of the criticism is likely to increase in the coming days as Tehran and Washington come closer to an arrangement.
“We can not go back to the dangerous nuclear plan, because a nuclear Iran is an existential threat and a very great threat to the security of the whole world,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the most prominent opponents of the nuclear deal, said Tuesday. Israel’s opposition to the nuclear deal was one of the reasons Trump ended the deal in 2018.
Netanyahu followed up on Wednesday with a warning to the United States: “I say to our best friends – an agreement with Iran paving its way to nuclear weapons that threaten us with destruction – an agreement like this will not bind us.” This was an indication that Israel intends to continue its efforts to undermine Iran at the nuclear front, which included assassinations of Iranian scientists.
Israel is believed to be behind a mining explosion that damaged an Iranian ship in the Red Sea, according to media reports on Tuesday. The New York Times, citing an unnamed US official, reported that Israel had told the US that the blast was retaliation for earlier Iranian attacks on Israeli vessels. Israel has not publicly confirmed or denied a role in the apparent attack.
The international back-and-forth comes on top of the domestic US criticism of the return to the agreement, led by Republicans as well as some Democrats.
“The long move to surrender begins,” tweeted John Bolton, a former national security adviser to the Trump administration, along with a link to a story about the talks.
Several senators have signed letters condemning the idea of returning to the agreement.
In the letters, including one sent this week, the Biden government is asked to maintain sanctions against Iran, arguing that it provides US leverage to help shape Iranian behavior. They argue that the 2015 agreement had too many provisions that expired and had to cover Iranian actions outside the nuclear sphere, such as its support for terrorism and proxy militias.
“We oppose any attempt to return to the failed JCPOA, or any agreement that offers unilateral concessions to the Iranian regime, while undermining the security of the United States and our allies and partners,” four GOP senators said in a statement. missively written. .
Even some lawmakers who were not present at the unveiling of the original agreement in Congress are now expressing their disapproval.
Democratic Representative Elaine Luria of Virginia, who was elected to Congress in 2018, tweeted: “I have serious concerns about resuming negotiations with Iran as it continues to enrich uranium at dangerous and unacceptable levels.”
According to supporters of the agreement, the critics are intellectually dishonest.
They notice it, for example. the point of negotiation on a return to the agreement is to end Iran’s activities such as uranium enrichment. And when it comes to sanctions, there will be numerous other US sanctions on Tehran, even if the US lifts back those lifted by the 2015 agreement.
However, the Biden government has said it wants to negotiate a ‘longer and stronger’ agreement with Iran, which could address issues outside the nuclear front, such as Iran’s ballistic missile program. But the administration insists that the first step must return to the original core agreement.
The desire of the Biden government to rejoin the agreement also has supporters in Congress.
A person familiar with the matter confirmed that the Democratic sense. Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Tim Kaine of Virginia distributed a letter to obtain signatures from colleagues. The letter “specifically supports compliance [for] return compliance with the JCPOA and also urgently address other local security issues, ”the person said.
The senior State Department official said the Biden government is well aware of the intense political interest in Capitol Hill. The official said the administration has been in contact with lawmakers and will continue to do so even if it does not agree with their position.
The officer added that one aspect of the conversations that is complicated is its indirect nature. The United States would like to meet directly with Iranian officials, but so far the Iranians have not indicated that they are ready to sit at the same table.