Page 7 - IRANRptJul22

2.0 Politics
2.1 US official says chances of reviving deal worse after
Doha talks
The chances of reviving the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the major powers are worse after indirect US-Iranian talks held in Doha this week that ended without progress, a senior US official told Reuters on June 30.
"The prospects for a deal after Doha are worse than they were before Doha and they will be getting worse by the day," said the official on condition of anonymity.
"You could describe Doha at best as treading water, at worst as moving backwards. But at this point treading water is for all practical purposes moving backwards," he added.
The talks saw European Union officials shuttle between the two sides trying to revive the nuclear deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), under which Iran curbed its nuclear development programme to guarantee it was kept entirely civilian in nature. In return for doing so, Iran was granted relief from economic sanctions.
Former US president Donald Trump in May 2018 unilaterally pulled Washington out of the multilateral agreement, opting to pursue Iran policy with the use of sanctions that were even tougher than those that existed prior to the signing of the JCPOA. For the past three years, Tehran has gradually stepped up its violations of the nuclear restrictions outlined by the deal.
"Their vague demands, reopening of settled issues, and requests clearly unrelated to the JCPOA all suggests to us ... that the real discussion that has to take place is [not] between Iran and the US to resolve remaining differences. It is between Iran and Iran to resolve the fundamental question about whether they are interested in a mutual return to the JCPOA," the senior US official was further quoted as saying by Reuters.
"At this point, I am not sure if they [the Iranians] know what more they want. They didn't come to Doha with specifics. Some of the things they came with either they knew—or should have known—were completely unsellable to us and to the Europeans," he added.
Iran, however, has presented the Doha talks as a positive development. At the same time, it has pointed the finger at the US for not providing guarantees that a new US administration would not again abandon the deal Trump-style.
"Iran has demanded verifiable and objective guarantees from the US that JCPOA will not be torpedoed again, that the US will not violate its obligations again, and that sanctions will not be re-imposed under other pretexts or designations," Iran's UN Ambassador Majid Takht Ravanchi told the UN Security Council on June 30.
The demand as explained by Ravanchi is a major problem—current US President Joe Biden has no legislative window via which he could compel a successor to stick with the JCPOA.
7 IRAN Country Report July 2022 www.intellinews.com