Iran Politician Says Refusing Direct Talks With US Is 'Obvious Mistake'

“Iran has stayed in the 2015 nuclear agreement, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and complied with its commitments under the deal," Ali Bagheri-Kani, who has been on a tour of European capitals this week, told the official news agency IRNA in London Thursday evening. "So, the first and foremost issue, which should be raised, is the removal of the US illegal sanctions on Iran."

In interviews with The Guardian and CNN's Christine Amanpour Thursday, Iran's top negotiator insisted that the US should lift its sanctions before Tehran returns to full compliance and offer guarantees that it would not leave a renewed JCPOA. Discussions on lifting US sanctions "should come to some sort of conclusion before" agreement is reached in Vienna, he told Amanpour.

The Vienna talks aim at reviving the 2015 JCPOA, which limited the Iranian nuclear program and was signed by Iran with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) plus Germany.

“We need verification, and this remains unresolved. It is one of the issues that remains not finalized. It is not enough for the ink to be put on the agreement,” Iran's top negotiator told the Guardian, while emphasizing that Tehran would not negotiate on its "defense capabilities" or security.

Hardliners in Iran argue that surviving US sanctions has strengthened Tehran’s position. Javan newspaper, which is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, recently said Iran would be returning to talks with a “full briefcase,” as it had accumulated 210kg of uranium enriched to 20 percent and 25kg enriched to 60 percent. Under the JCPOA Iran was allowed to enrich only to 3.67 percent.

Although the hardliners argue Iran has survived US sanctions, some observers in Iran and abroad say the Islamic Republic faces unsurmountable economic challenges if the restrictions are not lifted.

Iran insists that its higher enrichment does not violate the JCPOA as its steps were taken in response to the re-imposition of US sanctions. Such steps were "within the framework of the JCPOA," Bagheri-Kani told the state-run English channel Press TV Friday.

Iran has also trimmed back monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to that required under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Thursday that Washington should effectively demonstrate its intention to revise its sanctions policy against Tehran in order to revive the JCPOA but also emphasized that the Iranian side should carry out a series of measures to make it clear to all the other parties and to the IAEA that there would be no "deviations from the parameters of the JCPOA in the nuclear field."

According to The Guardian, Bagheri-Kani said guarantees were also required from the European parties to the JCPOA that they would trade with Iran, regardless of the US position, possibly by using a blocking statute nullifying the effect of US sanctions on European firms trading with Iran. Bagheri-Kani denied that Iran had stalled the resumption of the Vienna talks to further develop its own nuclear program.

When former US president Donald Trump imposed sanction in 2018, European signatories of the JCPOA tried to keep trade alive with Iran, but fear of the sanctions dissuaded private companies from doing business with Tehran.

Ali Naderi, who is close to sources of information in President Ebrahim Raisi’s government, did not provide any details as to which country released the funds.

“Less than 100 days after the 13th government took office, $3.5 billion of Iran’s frozen funds in one of the countries was released and a considerable part of it is entering the commercial market,” Naderi tweeted.

Iran has around $20 billion frozen in several countries because of US banking sanctions imposed in 2018, when the United States pulled out of the Obama-era nuclear deal called JCPOA.

South Korea holds around $7 billion and had been targeted by Tehran’s pressures to release the funds.

There has been no indication by the Biden Administration that funds have been released.

In October, Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said that Tehran wants US to allow $10 billion to be freed as a show of “goodwill” before talks on Iran’s nuclear program resume.

Iran’s currency, rial, has dropped by around 20 percent since Raisi took office in August, due to lack of oil exports and pessimist about the JCPOA talks.

Nuclear negotiations with Iran are set to resume at the end of this month after a five-month suspension by Tehran.

The statement said Malley “will coordinate our approaches on a broad range of concerns with Iran, including its destabilizing activities in the region and the upcoming seventh round of talks on a mutual return to full compliance with the JCPOA.”

Iran has hardened its posture prior to the talks, insisting that its nuclear issue was resolved in 2015 and negotiations should be about lifting US sanctions imposed by former president Donald Trump in 2018.

In addition to Iran’s expanding uranium enrichment activities, regional countries have long been concerned about its interventions in countries such as Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and elsewhere. One of the demands by the Trump administration was that Tehran should stop its “malign behavior”.

The Biden Administration has put the priority in restoring the nuclear deal (JCPOA), saying that once Iran’s atomic program is restricted, other issues can be addressed.

The rial on Thursday was trading above 284,000 against the US dollar.

There were hopes among Iranians that the national currency can rebound once positive news emerges regarding the resumption of talks to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement, JCPOA. If the nuclear talks succeed, US oil and banking sanctions will be lifted, giving Iran a financial lifeline.

The rial has declined another 2.8 percent in the past seven days, bringing its losses in a month to more than 3 percent and in the past six months to 31.5 percent.

The foreign currency market reaction in Iran can show a lack of optimism about the outcome of the multilateral nuclear talks.

The Iranian rial has lost value ninefold against major currencies since the former US president Donald Trump indicated that he would withdraw from the nuclear deal and impose sanctions. Once he implemented his threat, rial’s fall accelerated in 2018.

Oil exports provide at least half the revenue the Iranian government needs to operate. In the absence of sufficient oil exports, the Central Bank of Iran has been printing money, with liquidity rising rapidly since 2017 and fueling inflation.

The stakes are high, since failure in the negotiations resuming in Vienna on November 29 to revive a 2015 nuclear deal would carry the risk of a fresh regional war.

Iran's arch foe Israel has pushed for a tough policy if diplomacy fails to rein in Iran's nuclear work, long seen by the West as a cover for developing atomic bombs.

Tehran denies it has ever sought to develop nuclear weapons and says it is prepared for war in defense of its atomic program.

Iranian hardliners believe that a tough approach, spearheaded by their strongly anti-Western Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, can force Washington to accept Tehran's "maximalist demands", the officials and analysts said.

"Our nuclear facilities are up and running ... We can live with or without the deal... The ball is in their court," said a hardline Iranian official who asked not to be named.

"Progress means lifting all those cruel sanctions ... Iran has never abandoned the deal. America did."

Iran began breaching nuclear restrictions under the pact in response to a decision in 2018 by then US President Donald Trump to withdraw from the agreement and reimpose harsh sanctions that have devastated Iran's economy.

In an apparent bid to pressure Trump's successor Joe Biden to lift sanctions, Iran accelerated those breaches by rebuilding enriched uranium stocks, refining it to a higher fissile purity and installing advanced centrifuges to speed up production.

Dramatically upping the ante, Iran has also limited access given to UN nuclear watchdog inspectors under the nuclear deal, restricting their visits to declared nuclear sites only.

Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian tweeted that Tehran was ready "to deliver a good agreement", but some Western diplomats said a deal hinged on Tehran's readiness to show flexibility when the talks resume.

Failure to agree by early 2022, they said, would make the pact's revival less likely due to a key technicality - the longer Iran remains outside the deal, they said, the more nuclear expertise it will gain, shortening the time it might need to race to build a bomb if it chose to.

Kasra Aarabi, senior Iran analyst at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, said by using delays in the talks, advancing its atomic expertise and continuing to support paramilitary allies in the region, Khamenei and his hardline allies were "genuinely convinced they can intimidate the U.S. into granting more concessions without facing any consequences".

FAILURE OR SUCCESS

The fact that indirect talks between Tehran and Washington paused after the June election of hardline President Ebrahim Raisi signaled that the likelihood of failure was greater than chances of success of the negotiations, two Iranian sources close to the country's power center told Reuters.

Ali Vaez, senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, said the negotiations were bound to fail "if Iran's opening salvo is indeed its bottom line".

"By insisting on its maximalist demands, Iran is likely to get neither sanctions relief nor the guarantees it is seeking."

With differences between Tehran and Washington still vast after six rounds of indirect talks on some key issues - such as the speed and scope of lifting sanctions and how and when Iran will reverse its nuclear steps - chances of a deal seem remote.

Iran insists on immediate removal of all Trump-era sanctions in a verifiable process. Washington has said it would remove curbs "inconsistent with the 2015 nuclear pact" if Iran resumed compliance with the deal, implying it would leave in place others such as those imposed under terrorism or human rights measures.

Tehran also seeks guarantees that "no US administration" will renege on the pact again. But Biden cannot promise this because the nuclear deal is a non-binding political understanding, not a legally binding treaty.

The pact, negotiated under former US President Barrack Obama, was not a treaty because there was no way the Democratic president could have secured the approval of the U.S. Senate.

'NOT WORTH PURSUING'

Things are not much better for Biden.

Under the US Constitution, treaties require the consent of two-thirds of the 100-member Senate. Given that it is now split between 50 of Biden's fellow Democrats and 50 Republicans, there is no plausible way for Biden to meet that threshold.

Many Republican senators detest the nuclear agreement and even some Democrats oppose it. However, Rob Malley, the US special envoy for Iran, said last month :"Our intent is to be faithful to the deal if we could get back in."

Eurasia Group analyst Henry Rome said many hardliners in Iran were convinced that, since the deal has failed once, "it's not worth pursuing unless it's fundamentally altered".

Despite US sanctions, China has provided a financial lifeline to Iran by importing supplies of Iranian oil that have held above half a million barrels per day on average for the last three months.

Text from Reuters