Page 10 - IRANRptJun22

The collapse has raised anxieties about the safety of similar buildings in the country. The disaster reminded many Iranians of the 2017 fire and collapse of the Plasco building in Tehran. That tragedy took the lives of 26 people.
In Tehran, the city’s emergency department warned that 129 high-rise buildings in the capital remained unsafe based on a survey in 2017, the AP said. The country’s prosecutor general, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, has pledged to address the issue immediately.
2.4 Iran’s top diplomat appears at Davos and warns Biden ‘Drop Trump strategy or risk failure of nuclear deal talks’
With analysts generally agreeing that the ‘Vienna talks’ process for reaching an agreement to revive the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and major power still has a pulse—just about—Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian appeared at the World Economic Forum in Davos on May 26 and declared: Either US President Joe Biden ends his predecessor Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” strategy against Tehran and guarantee Iran economic relief from the lifting of sanctions or the window for diplomacy might close.
One big stumbling block to getting back on the path to finding a way to reinstate the nuclear deal, or JCPOA, is that Iran wants the US to reverse a 2019 Trump administration decision to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organisation (FTO). That would be a politically daunting move for Biden in the run-up to this year’s US midterm elections and there are some reports that he has told Israel he won’t be taking that step.
Since the JCPOA became ineffective after Trump in May 2018 unilaterally pulled the US out of the accord, Tehran has pushed ahead with nuclear enrichment and many observers reckon it may be only weeks or months away from assembling the fissile material required to build a nuclear weapon, though weaponising the material might take a few years as Iran gathers the knowhow and means.
A revived JCPOA would have to aim to ensure Iran went no further with its enrichment and, indeed, took a few steps back. In return, Iran would expect major sanctions relief. Whether it can live with the IRGC designation is another matter.
Amir-Abdollahian at Davos said that there was no tangible difference between the Iran policies of Biden and Trump.
“The most important issue is that Iran’s economic sanctions are effectively removed and that Trump’s maximum pressure policies are lifted,” he said, as reported by Bloomberg.
“The Americans know very well what the realities are on the ground and what they need to do. We’ve left the window of diplomacy open and we are serious about reaching a lasting agreement,” he added.
Iran’s top diplomat also accused Israel of “holding US foreign policy hostage” by “inflating” the significance of the IRGC terrorism listing to block the restoration of the JCPOA.
AFP on May 25 reported the US’ pointman on the JCPOA, Robert Malley, as telling the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "As of today the odds of a
10 IRAN Country Report June 2022 www.intellinews.com