Iran Says US Restoring Nuclear Waivers ‘Not Enough’, Asks Guarantees

State Department spokesperson Ned Price said the waiver was not a sanctions relief and emphasized that the US will not provide sanctions relief to Tehran before it returns to its commitments under 2015 nuclear deal.

"We did not provide sanctions relief for Iran and will not until/unless Tehran returns to its commitments under the JCPOA," the US State Department spokesman tweeted Friday after President Joe Biden's administration restored sanctions waivers for Iran to allow international nuclear cooperation projects.

Critics of the Biden Administration’s strategy to negotiate a restoration of the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran were quick to criticize the moveas a concession to Iran, which might have prompted Price’s tweet.

Congressional pressure has been increasing on the Biden Administration to explain its Iran strategy, while the Vienna talks have dragged on for 10 months without a result and Iran has continued to expand its nuclear program.

The waivers allowed Russian, Chinese and European companies to continue cooperating with Tehran's non-proliferation projects including electricity generation at Bushehr nuclear power plant, Arak heavy water production facilities, and the Tehran Research Reactor. The Trump administration which pulled out of the JCPOA in May 2018 rescinded the waivers in 2019 and 2020 as part of his "maximum pressure" campaign.

Iranian officials have not commented on the Biden administration's move but Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) in a ," tweet Saturday said no agreement can restrict "Iran's legal right to continue research and development" and "to maintain its peaceful nuclear capabilities and achievements" in an apparent reference to the Biden administration's restoration of the waivers.

After a meeting on Wednesday with Iran's top negotiator, Ali Bagheri-Kani, the spokesman of the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, Mahmoud Abbaszadeh-Meshkini, said Bagheri-Kani had said the talks were moving in a positive direction but there were important issues that had to be resolved. According to Abbaszadeh-Meshkini, in his meeting with lawmakers Bagheri-Kani denied any direct talks with the US.

“The waiver with respect to these activities is designed to facilitate discussions that would help to close a deal on a mutual return to full implementation of the JCPOA and lay the groundwork for Iran’s return to performance of its JCPOA commitments,” the State Department said in a notice to Congress that announced the move.

“It is also designed to serve US non-proliferation and nuclear safety interests and constrain Iran’s nuclear activities,” the State Department said. “It is being issued as a matter of policy discretion with these objectives in mind, and not pursuant to a commitment or as part of a quid pro quo. We are focused on working with partners and allies to counter the full range of threats that Iran poses.”

The next round of indirect talks between Iran and the US in Vienna to restore the deal, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), are expected to resume soon. The eight round of talks broke last week and negotiators returned to their capitals for consultations.

"We did precisely what the last Administration did: Permit our international partners to address growing nuclear non-proliferation and safety risks in Iran," Price said in his tweet in response to critics who say the Biden administration is desperate to make a deal while Tehran continues to rule out any concessions.

The waiver was needed to allow for technical discussions that were key to the talks about a return to the deal, a senior State Department official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. The official added that restoring the waiver was not a signal that the United States was on the verge of reaching an understanding to return to the deal.

"The waivers are less a goodwill gesture or a concession to Iran, but rather technical steps that are probably aimed at ensuring implementation discussions can go forward in Vienna," Eurasia Group analyst Henry Rome told Reuters.

This is a shorter time-frame than the 12-month calculation underpinning the 2015 agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), which Iran and world powers are negotiating in Vienna to restore.

The Wall Street Journal Thursday cited US officials saying they had reached this conclusion late last year but still considered the JCPOA worth reviving. ‘Break out’ is seen as the time required for the US to both detect a possible Iranian bomb program and take counter-measures.

The12-month period, while not cited in the JCPOA, was based on the amount of enriched uranium held by Iran under the agreement, and the number and nature of centrifuges – the key device – available or in use. Before the 2015 agreement, the time was under a year.

The JCPOA set limits on the amount of uranium Iran could stockpile and limited the degree of enrichment to 3.67 percent, well below the 90 percent of ‘weapons grade.’

While there would be little ambiguity over Iran returning to these limits, Iranian negotiators may be arguing in Vienna that it is impractical to limit centrifuges to the less advanced ones allowed by the JCPOA, especially as some have been reportedly destroyed by attacks on nuclear sites widely attributed to Israel.

But the biggest challenge in calculating ‘break out’ – and which may explain the latest assessment of a restored JCPOA – is factoring in the value of experience and knowledge gained by Iranian scientists in the expansion and improvement of the program since 2019, including in deploying more advanced centrifuges.

Increased knowledge and experience

“There’s nothing that a restored JCPOA will do to compensate for that increased knowledge and experience” Iran had gained, Robert Einhorn, a former senior State Department arms-control official, told the Wall Street Journal. Einhorn said a six-month break-out period would be enough time to respond—militarily if necessary—to an overt Iranian nuclear breakout.

A State Department spokesperson approached by the Wall Street Journal refused to comment on break-out assessments while insisting the US administration believed a restored JCPOA “would address our urgent nonproliferation concerns.”

The spokesman reiterated a message, delivered by among others Secretary of State Antony Blinken, that “we have only a few weeks to conclude an understanding, after which the pace of Iran’s nuclear advances will make return to the JCPOA impossible.”

While any break out would be shorter than the time Iran would need to assemble a deliverable device, some former US officials have suggested that a period of under six months would remove Washington’s ability to respond sudden ramp-up beyond the JCPOA.

Talks in Vienna over restoring the JCPOA, paused this week for political consultations, have struggled to agree how exactly the Iranian nuclear program be brought back within JCPOA limits and precisely which US sanctions violate the agreement.

Iran began exceeding the JCPOA in 2019, last year reaching 60 percent enrichment, after President Donald Trump left the agreement in 2018 and imposed ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions his officials said would lead Tehran to accept 12 US demands, including ending all enrichment, scrapping missile defense, and breaking regional alliances.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price on Wednesday said the window of opportunity to restore the 2015 nuclear agreement known as JCPOA “is very, very short,” and added, “that window is very, very short precisely because once Iran reaches the point where its nuclear advances have obviated the nonproliferation benefits that the JCPOA conveyed, that’s a point at which it will no longer make sense, from our national security interests and the national security interests of our allies and partners around the world, to pursue a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA and we’ll have to pursue another course.”

Iran began enriching uranium to a higher purity level of 20 percent when former president Donald Trump tightened US sanctions in May 2019. But it boosted enrichment to the dangerous level of 60 percent in early 2021 when President Joe Biden had announced his readiness to return to the JCPOA, abandoned by Trump in 2018.

Ned Price however, blamed the former administration for triggering Iran’s decision to enrich more uranium to a higher degree of purity. A reporter asked him if he believed Iran had a choice and decided to stockpile more fissile material and get closer to a bomb. Price insisted that the JCPOA was preventing such a move and the US withdrawal from the agreement allowed Iran to boost enrichment.

Price avoided a direct response to a question on the most recent political development in Washington, when Democratic Senator Bob Menendez gave a detailed speech on the Senate floor on February 1, questioning Biden’s policy on Iran and its nuclear program. The State Department spokesperson reiterated the administration’s concerns about Iran’s nuclear program but did not respond to the Senator’s criticism.

Following Menendez’s remarks, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee announced on Wednesday that Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley will testify next week in a closed session, a demand by many Republicans for answers from the Administration on Iran policy.

Price’s warning about time running out has been a message constantly repeated by the Biden Administration and its European allies for months, without issuing a deadline for Iran to reach an agreement in Vienna. The enforcement of sanctions has also slackened, allowing Tehran to export more oil and claim to be in a stronger position in the talks.

China, which is one of the signatories of the JCPOA and a participant in the Vienna talks, has increased its oil imports from Iran, indirectly undercutting the West’s leverage in the negotiations. There have been reports that the US has asked China not to violate its sanctions, but apparently Beijing has pursued its own policy of expanding ties with the Islamic Republic.

Tehran has also continued its provocations in the region, with repeated militia drone and rocket attacks in Iraq and Syria against US forces. In January, Iran-backed Houthi forces in an unprecedented escalation began launching missile and drone attacks against the United Arab Emirates.

To what extent the US Congress will stay on the sidelines of policy toward Iran is not clear but Senator Menendez appeared determined to put pressure on the Administration.

“It’s time to start thinking out of the box and consider new strategies for rolling back Iran’s nuclear program and addressing its dangerous and nefarious activities,” he said on the Senate floor.

The briefing session to update Senators on the Vienna negotiations is scheduled to be held on Wednesday, February 9, but the hearing won't be open to the public or televised.

The session was set only a day after Senator Bob Menendez asked President Joe Biden to stop the nuclear talks and adopt a tougher position on the Islamic Republic.

Menendez, the chairman of the committee, is the first senior Democrat to challenge Biden on its policies towards Iran, saying, “We cannot allow Iran to threaten us into a bad deal or an interim agreement that allows it to continue building its nuclear capacity”.

Menendez, who opposed the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) when it was negotiated by the Obama administration, said Biden should not stick to the framework that leaves “the vast majority of Iran’s nuclear program intact”.

Earlier in January more than 100 Republican members of Congress wrote to Biden asking him to stop the negotiations and get tough with Iran, which is fast enriching uranium to higher levels.

Iran’s enrichment picked up in early 2021, after Biden said he wants to restore the JCPOA and moved toward opening talks with Iran.

The Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday issued his call not in a letter or a tweet, but on the Senate Floor in detailed remarks that clearly laid out his concerns over the Biden Administration’s negotiations with Iran over reviving the 2015 nuclear deal.

Over the past one year, as the Administration has embarked on a policy of reviving the agreement, Republicans have repeatedly appealed to Biden not to slacken pressure on Tehran and not to return to a deal that they argued was weak from its inception. But Democrats had largely stayed aloof, not challenging Biden’s efforts during ten months of talks with Tehran that so far have not resulted in an agreement.

Menedez, who opposed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) when it was negotiated by the Obama administration, said Biden should not stick to the current negotiations in Vienna while Iran continues to expand its nuclear program, fast approaching the point of being able to make a bomb.

“As someone who has followed Iran's nuclear ambition for the better part of three decades, I am here today to raise concerns about the current round of negotiations over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and Iran’s dangerously and rapidly escalating nuclear program that has put it on the brink of having enough material for a nuclear weapon,” the Senator said.

He also highlighted Iran’s regional behavior and its ballistic missile programs, two issues untouched by the JCPOA, but cited as reasons by former president Donald Trump when he withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018 and impose tough sanctions on Iran.

Menedez argued that what the Administration is negotiating about does not seem to include non-nuclear issue, or even a stronger nuclear agreement and said, “at this point, we seriously have to ask what exactly are we trying to salvage?”

The New Jersey Senator in detail explained how Iran has been circumventing US oil export sanctions since early 2021 and demanded stronger enforcement by the Biden Administration. “We can’t turn a blind eye to these violations,” Menendez said.

At the same time, the Senator proposed to establish a regional nuclear fuel bank to help Iran with fuel for energy generation, if its aim is purely civilian. He emphasized that the United States should demand that Iran immediately ratify the Additional Protocol to allow for inspection of suspect nuclear sites, ban all uranium enrichment centrifuges and close its Fordow enrichment facility.

Going beyond the nuclear issue, Senator Menendez insisted that “We cannot ignore Iran’s nefarious support for terrorism or accept threats to American interests and lives.” He added, “That is why I’m calling on the Biden administration and our international partners to exert more pressure on Iran to counter its nuclear program, its missile program, and its dangerous behavior around the Middle East, including attacks on American personnel and assets.”

He warned that the US does not know how far Iran has advanced in developing a nuclear warhead, while it is approaching the point of having enough fissile material for a bomb.

Menedez warned that Iran has reached a significant strategic power with its missile program, which by itself is a serious threat.

“It’s time to start thinking out of the box and consider new strategies for rolling back Iran’s nuclear program and addressing its dangerous and nefarious activities. These new efforts should include creative diplomatic initiatives, stricter sanctions enforcement, and a steely determination from Congress to back up President Biden’s declaration that Iran will ‘never get a nuclear weapon on my watch’,” Bob Menendez said.