Page 10 - MEOG 32

MEOG POLICY & SECURITY MEOG
US, Iran political approvals now needed to revive nuclear deal
IRAN
THE Vienna talks are at long last over – but that does not mean an agreement to relaunch the nuclear deal is done. For that to happen, the Biden administration in the US and Iran’s ulti- mate authority, its supreme leader, must approve the “final text” drafted by Iranian and European representatives at the negotiations in the Aus- trian capital over the past five days.
That is far from a certainty, especially perhaps where US leader Joe Biden is concerned, given the volatile American political environment that will exist in the run-up to the November mid- term elections.
“We worked for four days and today the text is on the table,” an EU official at the talks told reporters. “The negotiation is finished, it’s the final text... and it will not be renegotiated.”
Further outlining the situation as it now stands, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Twitter that everything that could be negotiated had been negotiated. He added that behind every part of the drafted proposals “lies a political decision that needs to be taken” in the capitals of the countries involved.
Responding to the announcement of the final drafted text, a US State Department spokesman said the US was ready to “quickly conclude a deal” to revive the nuclear deal, or JCPOA, on the basis of proposals put forward by the Euro- pean Union.
Tehran, he added, had repeatedly said it was ready for a return to mutual implementation of the agreement and Washington would now wait to see if “their actions match their words”.
And therein lies the rub. For in Tehran, Ira- nian officials were saying much the same thing about the US. The line was that Iran would await whether Washington would show enough “flex- ibility” to get the deal over the line.
If it returns, the JCPOA – designed to curb Iran’s nuclear development programme to guar- antee it is kept entirely civilian in return for the lifting of economic sanctions on Iran – would come back at a time that the Iranians are thought to have reached the point where they could stockpile enough highly enriched uranium to make at least one crude nuclear device.
Preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East is clearly a priority for Biden, but the final
provisions in the deal that must be accepted by the US and Iran to seal the return of the JCPOA are troublesome given the political constituen- cies that must be persuaded of the merits of a restored agreement.
One final issue is to what extent the US will guarantee that sanctions are lifted not just in name but in effect, by providing credit guaran- tees. Tehran is wary that Biden’s successor could rip up the JCPOA, just as Trump did.
It wants to see binding pledges that business contracts signed before the next US presidential elections in November 2024 will be honoured by the next US administration, even should it pull out of the deal.
Another outstanding issue is Iran’s demand that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) be removed from the US’s list of foreign terrorist organisations (FTOs), but there are signs Iran may have relented on that point.
A third issue is Iran’s insistence that the Inter- national Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, end an investigation into the origins of nuclear particles found at three Iranian sites. Iran remains deeply opposed to the investigation, saying it is based on intelli- gence provided by Israel.
Apart from Iran, the other remaining signa- tories to the 2015 nuclear deal are France, Ger- many, the UK, Russia and China, but all eyes will be on Tehran and Washington, which under then president Donald Trump in May 2018 uni- laterally pulled out of the multilateral agreement.
An Iranian Foreign Ministry official was quoted by official news agency IRNA as saying that Tehran had given its preliminary response to the EU’s text. It was “not at a stage to talk about finalising the deal,” he said, as for “more com- prehensive discussions were needed in Tehran”.
Russian lead negotiator at the talks Mikhail Ulyanov on August 7 said of the latest efforts to bring back the JCPOA that “we stand five min- utes or five seconds from the finish line.”
Speaking to reporters outside Vienna’s Palais Coburg hotel where the talks were being held, he added: “They are sensitive [issues that are involved], especially for Iranians and Americans. I cannot guarantee, but the impression is that we are moving in the right direction.”™
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 32 10•August•2022