Iran's Foreign Minister Again Says Nuclear Talks Will Resume 'Soon'

Voices outside the government have emerged as several reports in the Iranian media say as the country faces its worst economic crisis ever, a large part of the Iranian population cannot make ends meet. Inflation is at least 50 percent and food prices have claimed even faster.

Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in an interview with Al-An TV in the United Arab Emirates during his visit to that country last week, "both Iran and the United States have sustained losses during the past 40 years" because of the impasse in their relations, adding that "it is time now for Tehran and Washington to start a dialogue in this direction based on a fair framework."

Speaking also about the impasse in talks to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement, Ahmadinejad said that "the JCPOA was initially intended to solve existing problems between the two countries, but after several years not only it failed to achieve that, but it has led to more complication." Ahmadinejad acknowledged that "This means the agreement was not successful because it was not fair."

"Six countries oppose Iran's nuclear activities and Iran has been holding talks with all of those six countries to reach a settlement. This means Iran will always be the loser because it has one vote against six votes by those countries," Ahmadinejad explained.

"So, what are Iran and those countries going to return to? I do not think any one of those seven parties would want to return to that agreement. The US side might want to return to the JCPOA, but what about the Iranian side," he asked.

However, Ahmadinejad concluded that "the nuclear issue is only a pretext. The differences between Iran and the United States are deeper than that. They have a bigger problem, which the JCPOA failed to solve. Wise men from both sides should sit together and solve that problem."

Meanwhile, Grand Ayatollah Lotfollah Safi Golpayegani, a former Guardian Council member who is said to be 104 years old and has at times offered ideas different from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has called for an end to Iran's isolation in the world and said in a meeting with Majles Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf on Frida: "I am seriously concerned about the country's economic situation and the people's problems."

The Grand Ayatollah suggested: "We should maintain relations with all the countries in the world. It is not good to be sulking with many other countries. In order to restore the rights of the people and put an end to the current situation which Iranians do not deserve, we should maintain relations with the world."

Meanwhile former Lawmaker and one of the leaders of Iran's reform camp, Mohammad Reza Khabbaz has said in a commentary published by reformist daily Arman on Thursday that "the people of Iran are waiting for a brave decision to be made by the government in order to solve difficulties people face."

Explaining the economic hardships Iranians are experiencing, Khabbaz said that although the problem is serious, it can still be solved with a surgical operation and the sooner this surgery is done, the less painful it will be. But if remained untreated, more serious and dangerous consequences will follow.

Khabbaz was in fact saying in his cryptic language that if the sanctions are not lifted and the country's economic problems continue to worsen hungry people will take to the streets and endanger the regime's existence. This is what several sociologists and economists have predicted throughout the year.

He said the government's problem is that it is consisting of a bunch of like-minded individuals, and everyone is supporting the government's approach. During the past week, many conservatives have criticized the Raisi Administration's inaction and indecision about restarting the negotiations for reviving the JCPOA.

Khabbaz suggested that the Raisi administration has only two options: waiting and seeing the gradual collapse of the country's economy or surrendering to a surgical operation by experts.

Reports published last week in Iran, including one in the proreform Fararu website said a typical government employee spends one-third of his or her salary to buy for a family's requirements for only a few days. Another report by Nemat Ahmadi, a prominent lawyer in Tehran, which was published in Arman on Thursday, listed the price of some staples and warned that Iran is headed toward a situation that happened during the 1918 famine which killed millions of Iranians.

Indirect nuclear talks that the Biden Administration started in April in Vienna with Iran stopped in June when Tehran arguing that its new president needed time to form a government suspended participation.

There have been references by Iran’s foreign minister and other officials that Washington must “take concrete steps” or “show goodwill” for the negotiation to resume and succeed. Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian even said in early October that while in New York the previous month he had told intermediaries the US should unfreeze $10 billion of Iran’s blocked funds.

Spokesperson Ned Price who was answering a question from a reporter during his press briefing on Friday said that the United States and other world powers are “united in the belief that diplomacy continues to provide the most effective pathway to verifiably and permanently prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and we are united in the belief that negotiations should resume in Vienna as soon as possible and that they should resume precisely where they left off after the sixth round.”

By rejecting the idea of new demands or changes to the process, Price also used the words “permanently prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” The existing nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that Donald Trump abandoned in 2018, has sunset clauses which end in the next few years, theoretically allowing Iran to pursue its nuclear program as it wishes. Critics have always said this constitutes the agreement’s main weakness.

It is not clear if the reference to ‘permanently’ means other, more stringent arrangements have been discussed in Vienna. Those who opposed Biden’s decision to negotiate a return to the JCPOA have been arguing that even if the deal is restored and Iran resumes compliance with its restrictions, in a few years most would go away, and it can do what it wishes.

Price was also asked if a discussion that took place earlier this month between US Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley and a South Korean diplomat signaled a move to have Seoul free Iran’s $7 billion frozen by two of its banks. If true, this would have meant that Washington was trying to entice Tehran to return to the talks.

Price did not directly address the issue of the frozen funds and argued that Malley is always in touch with US allies, and South Koreans “are important across a range of fronts, and that includes Iran.” He added, “That includes with the enforcement of the sanctions regime that continues to be in place on Iran unless and until there is a negotiated return to compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.”

But South Korea has never been involved with the JCPOA except as an oil customer of Iran that stopped doing business once US sanctions were imposed and froze $7 billion it owed Iran.

Putin made the remarks as Bennett was leaving his residence in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi, after his first meeting with the Russian leader after becoming prime minister in June.

Russia and Israel have developed close political, economic and cultural ties that have helped them tackle delicate and divisive issues, such as the situation in Syria where Moscow has teamed up with Tehran to shore up Syrian President Bashar Assad's rule.

Russia has waged a military campaign in Syria since 2015, helping Assad's government reclaim control over most of the country.

Moscow also has helped modernize Syria's military, including providing Assad with air defense systems, and trained its personnel.

Israel, however, has been targeting Iranian military bases and weapons transfers in Syria since early 2017 stating that it cannot tolerate a dangerous Iranian presence on its borders. Russia has looked the other way as Israel has bombed hundreds of targets.

Russia and Israel established a military hotline to coordinate air force operations over Syria to avoid clashes.

In 2018, Russia-Israeli ties were severely tested by the downing of a Russian warplane by Syrian forces that responded to an Israeli air raid and mistook a Russian reconnaissance plane for Israeli jets.

All 15 members of the Russian crew died.

Moscow also has played a delicate diplomatic game of maintaining friendly ties with both Israel and Iran.

In 2018, Moscow struck a deal with Tehran to keep its fighters away from the Golan Heights to accommodate Israeli concerns about the Iranian presence in Syria.

Russia is one of the international parties that negotiated a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

The deal fell apart after then-President Donald Trump withdrew in 2018.

But the new US administration is now trying to revive the deal with other international powers — a step that Israel opposes.

Bennett said earlier that he would also discuss Iran’s nuclear talks, stalled since June, with Putin. but there are no details so far about the discussion.

"We will also talk about the situation in Syria, and the efforts to halt the Iranian military nuclear program," Bennett said at the start of the talks.

Bennett and other Israeli officials have been warning in the past months that they have to take the matters into their own hands to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Latest reports indicate Israeli preparations for a potential confrontation with Iran.

With reporting by AP

At one point in the interview, carried out by Brian Finlay of the Stimson Center, Grossi, the IAEA director-general replies "yes" when asked if he would support censuring Iran at the agency’s late November board meeting, but Finlay fails to ask a single follow-up question, even to query the grounds for censure.

This led to considerable confusion in media reports but Grossi or the IAEA have not denied that he said “yes” to the question about censuring Iran. It would be uncommon if the IAEA chief would publicly endorse censure, a decision that member states should make.

Throughout the rest of the interview, Grossi makes the clear distinction characteristic of the IAEA between its technical role as the body responsible for monitoring Iran’s nuclear sites and any political decisions taken by the nation-states who are IAEA members and sit on its board.

By the time he sat down with Finlay Thursday for a session broadcast live on Zoom, Grossi had met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, as well as senators and members of congress. Asked about the ‘plan b’ or “other options” touted by Blinken should nuclear talks with Iran fail, Grossi said: “This is a national thing, or a multinational thing, and I don’t have an opinion on that.”

Grossi described the situation with Iran as a “difficult juncture” and stressed the importance of explaining the agency’s actions to the US government and “of course to listen to them.”

The IAEA head explained how the agency’s role interacted with the Vienna nuclear talks, which until suspended in June had sought to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).

With the US, which left the JCPOA in 2018, taking part indirectly in Vienna alongside remaining JCPOA signatories – China, France, Germany, Iran, Russia and the United Kingdom – the talks have struggled to agree which US sanctions contravene the JCPOA and exactly how Iran’s nuclear program, expanded and improved since 2019, should be returned to JCPOA limits.

“When it comes to the JCPOA I am not a party to the negotiations,” Grossi said. “The IAEA is an essential element as a guarantor and a verifier, and we are in constant deliberation with the negotiators as to whether what they are doing is in line what we might be needed to be verifying and so forth. It’s an immensely dense process…”

Grossi explained that the IAEA’s role had entered a “new phase” not with the new administration of president Ebrahim Raisi (Raeesi), which took office in August, but with last December’s vote by the Iranian parliament requiring the government, should the US not lift sanctions, to both increase uranium enrichment and reduce IAEA monitoring to that required by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. “Parliament was telling the government what to do with an amazing degree of specificity,” Grossi noted.

Keeping the patient stable

This had led Grossi to reach a temporary arrangement in February, extended in September, for IAEA access by maintaining its cameras, giving it the opportunity should the Vienna talks succeed to restore a full picture of Iran’s nuclear work.

Grossi said that in his talks in Tehran in February he had argued that keeping such a level of monitoring might help keep Iran’s “partners” within the JCPOA “simply because they would be able to avoid a big black hole” in terms of their knowledge of Iran’s activities. “We have been keeping the patient stable in terms of the amount of information and quality of information we can put on the table,” he noted.

Grossi has raised several matters of concern recently over Iran, including past unexplained nuclear work and the agency being stopped from servicing equipment at a site in Karaj.

But he clearly told the Stimson Center it was too early to anticipate what would happen at the IAEA board of governors meeting in November. At the last meeting September, the US did not raise a motion of censure, as it had been speculated, possibly because Russia made clear it would object.

Grossi said the board meeting was in his “mental structure” so far away that it was part of the 23rd century. “There is so much going on, and so much that may influence what may or may not happen there. I am concentrating on the immediate challenges that we have …There are many actors.”

The Iranian media generally played down the Grossi interview. Outlets most critical of the JCPOA have criticized the IAEA for following a political agenda coming from Washington.

Javan daily newspaper published a commentary by Hadi Mohammadi on Thursday that the United States is using the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to monitor Iran's nuclear activities and to inspect its nuclear installations on its behalf, based on the authority vested in the UN nuclear watchdog by the Non-Proliferation Protocol (NPT) and some of the clauses in the Iran nuclear deal, JCPOA.

The United States and the West benefit from the intelligence gathered by the IAEA for them free of charge, Mohammadi claimed in the commentary. Meanwhile, he opined that this intelligence gathering mechanism was badly harmed with the reduction in Iran's commitments under the JCPOA. However, the IAEA Chief is trying to get back the initial concessions given to the West by the JCPOA, Javan maintained.

Last December, Iran passed a law limiting IAEA’s monitoring access to its nuclear sites, demanding that the US should lift its sanctions. A limited and temporary deal is in place now, but Grossi has complained that Iran is curtailing his agency’s ability to do its job.

The commentary further stressed that in fact, it is the United States that is under ‘maximum pressure’ by Iran to return to the negotiations as it has failed to force Iran to make new concessions.

Javan insisted that there is no room for the inclusion of talks about Iran's missile programs in the new negotiations, and the West can only hope to harness Iran's nuclear program, but it needs to give concessions to make that possible.

It described Grossi's call for having a political discussion with Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian as naïve and warned the IAEA chief that Iran is not under any commitment to go beyond the discussion of technical matters within the frameworks of NPT. Mohammadi added that Grossi should know that the members of Tehran's new negotiating team are different from their predecessors.

The commentary said that Grossi can only talk with Iran's nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami rather than hoping to meet with the foreign minister. "He should distance himself from the idea of holding talks in Iran by proxy for the United States," the commentary said, adding that a chat with Eslami is the most he can get if he visits Tehran. The US, said the commentary, should forget about the division of labor with Grossi and instead should make concessions.

Meanwhile, in another article entitled "Winding in Washington," another IRGC media outlet likened Grossi to a clock that Washington has winded to make its moves in Tehran. This article also repeated the argument of the commentary about Grossi being used by the US as a tool to exert pressure on Tehran before starting the talks to revive the JCPOA.

The article added that Washington is also planning to use Grossi to exert pressure on other countries, including China, via the International Atomic Energy Agency. This was a reference to US officials' statements about asking China to stop buying oil from Iran.

Grossi asked to meet with Amirabdollahian following his meetings with US officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week. During the meeting, Blinken said that Iran should remain committed to the verification of its nuclear activities, stop provocative actions and return to diplomacy.

Subsequently, Grossi told the Financial Times Monday that "a temporary arrangement for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to monitor Iran’s nuclear sites was no longer intact." Grossi told the newspaper he wanted "an urgent meeting – 'contact at the political level' − with Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian to discuss surveillance arrangements."

“I haven’t been able to talk to [Iran’s new] foreign minister,” Grossi told the FT. “I need to have this contact at the political level. This is indispensable. Without it, we cannot understand each other.”