Exclusive - Iran Undecided On Nuclear Talks As US Sets Immediate Deadline

The US official, quoted by Reuters, said he hoped Iran's lead negotiator would return in the coming days to Vienna, where the talks are taking place, "with a positive view" but that even if he did, there were still difficult issues on the table.

"There's been significant progress over the last week or two," the US official told reporters on condition that he not be named. "But at the same time, it's important to note that very serious issues remain."

Iran’s official news website IRNA on Saturday drew attention to the “serious issues” in an unsigned article. While it said that no one is privy to the details of disagreements between Washington and Tehran, it is clear what Iran does NOT want.

IRNA elaborated that Tehran does not want a JCPOA+ type of a new agreement or any temporary deal.

A report by Reuters earlier this month said that a draft agreement is being shaped which points toward a step-by-step or sequenced approach starting with the release of some of Iran’s frozen funds in exchange for a five-percent cap on uranium enrichment by Iran. In the following weeks and months, the two sides take more steps to get closer to a final restoration of the JCPOA.

While the Western side in the Vienna talks did not deny the Reuters report, Iran rejected it as fake Western disinformation to influence the talks. IRNA’s reference to a “temporary deal” might be about a sequenced deal, which does not lift US sanctions in one step.

IRNA also said Iran does not want “implicit promises” and “verbal guarantees” in the negotiations, adding that mentioning what Tehran does not want, can shed light on the situation of the talks in Vienna.

This refers to Iran’s position since at least November insisting it wants an iron-clad guarantee by the United States that it would never renege on a new agreement, pointing to former president Donald Trump’s decision in 2018 to withdraw from the JCPOA. The Biden Administration in response has said that it cannot constitutionally provide such a guarantee. A future US president can make his own decisions if the agreement is not a treaty ratified by the Senate.

The US official talking with media on Friday said a deal, if one can be reached, would in many ways track the terms of the original accord on Iran's levels of uranium enrichment, the stockpile of enriched uranium it may hold, and the numbers of centrifuges it may operate.

However, he left open the possibility of some modifications to account the additional sanctions that president Trump imposed on Iran in 2018 and the nuclear advances that Iran has since made.

"We hope that when Iran comes back, it comes back in with a pre-disposition to try to resolve this quickly," the official said, saying there were still disagreements "for which there is not a solution that's on the table."

He also declined to name the sticking points, as did IRNA, and would not be drawn into whether Washington had persuaded Tehran to agree to follow-on negotiations on its nuclear program, its development of ballistic missiles or support for regional proxies.

He also said there has not been any deal reached in separate negotiations about the release of four U.S. citizens whom the United States believes have been wrongfully detained by Iran.

With reporting by Reuters

Washington will continue to engage with Moscow over efforts to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, even though Moscow's invasion of Ukraine had made it a "pariah on the world stage," State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Friday.

Price said US officials would now only engage with Russia counterparts on issues of "fundamental to our national security interest."

Some have expressed reservations about continuing to involve Russia in high-stakes diplomatic and security issues, while Moscow has up-ended the international security structures by its attack on Ukraine with the declared aim of replacing its elected government and deciding its foreign policy course.

Many in Iran are criticizing their government for having given Russia control over the nuclear talks. Moscow has increasingly acted as a mediator between Tehran and Washington, while critics in Iran say its intentions cannot be trusted.

"The fact that Russia has now invaded Ukraine should not give Iran the green light to develop a nuclear weapon," Price added.

Iran’s chief negotiator left the negotiations just days before the invasion and returned to Tehran ostensibly for consultations.

Another US official was quoted by Reuters as saying that significant progress has been made in the talks but serious issues remain to be resolved.

"(Uranium) enrichment ... continues with a maximum ceiling of 60%, which led Westerners to rush to negotiations, and it will continue with the lifting of sanctions by both 20% and 5%," the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Mohammad Eslami, was quoted by the semi-official news agency Fars as saying.

The 2015 deal, known as JCPOA, restricts the purity to which Iran can enrich uranium to 3.67%, far below the roughly 90% that is weapons-grade or the 20% Iran reached before the deal. Iran is now enriching to various levels, the highest being around 60%.

Iran began exceeding the JCPOA enrichment limit up to 20 percent purity after the United States withdrew from the agreement in 2018 and imposed sanctions on Tehran.

After US elections in 2020, Iran raised the enrichment level to 60 percent, once the US signaled it was ready to start negotiations to return to the JCPOA.

Reuters reported last week that a draft agreement partially ready after more than 10 months of talks in Vienna stipulates that Iran will return to 5 percent enrichment and the US would start loosening sanctions.

Negotiations between Iran and world powers to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, known as JCPOA have unofficially paused in Vienna as Iranian envoy Ali Bagheri-Kani returned to Tehran earlier this week ostensibly for consultations.

Former chairman of Iranian parliament’s national security committee, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh told Aftab News in Tehran on Friday that “the JCPOA became a victim of the war in Ukraine.” He added, “Although I am pessimistic about the long shadow of the war on JCPOA talks, but I still believe that Putin’s attack on Ukraine might lead to a willingness in the West to bring talks with Iran to a conclusion.”

Falahatpisheh noted two possible reasons for his belief that the Ukraine war might speed up an agreement in Vienna. He argued that the United States and its European allies do not want to see Iran fall further into the Russian orbit. Second, they want to end Russia’s influence in the talks.

Indeed, Moscow’s chief negotiator Mikhail Ulyanov has assumed an increasingly prominent role in the talks since November, when Iran’s new delegation headed by hardliners resumed the talks in Vienna.

Many in Iranian media have questioned his role as an active mediator, showcasing his photos sitting alone with US chief envoy Robert Malley in hotel conference rooms on several occasions. Even in Tehran’s press controlled by the government, many questioned why Iran does not directly negotiate with the Biden Administration instead of allowing Russia to act as a broker.

In the same vein, some might wonder if Bagheri-Kani’s sudden return to Tehran a few days ago might not have been related to Russia’s impending attack on Ukraine.

There are some questions about what path Tehran will choose after the unmistakable jolt to international relations by Putin’s invasion.

Tehran might now calculate that it does not need an agreement with the West as long as it is able to break US sanctions and export oil, given the global need for fossil fuels amid heavy sanctions on Russia. Shipments have already reached above one million barrels a day, mainly to China. In the meantime, it can continue its uranium enrichment, become a nuclear threshold state, and have more leverage in any future talks.

The opposite is also possible, though less likely. Tehran might see Russia as isolated and not useful any longer as a diplomatic backer. It might decide to make concessions to the West now, rather than live with US sanctions, amid an environment of Western unity reminiscent of the Cold War.

But remaining a Russian ally in these circumstances might offer Iran even some military cover and weapons systems, as some sort of a ‘Cold War satellite’ for Moscow.

Falahatpisheh in his interview argued that he has repeatedly expressed his preference for a quick agreement before an external factor derails the nuclear talks. Russia is bound to use every card in its pocket now, including the Iran nuclear issue, he said.

The former senior lawmaker even went as far as indirectly hinting that Moscow has already used its influence in the Vienna talks to detriment of Iran. “Russia knew very well that in case of an agreement in Vienna and the lifting of sanctions, Iran could boost its potential for oil and gas exports to Europe and elsewhere in a short period of time and tried to control the Vienna negotiations.” He added, “If Iran had reached an agreement, now it could sell its oil at above $100 a barrel and regain its global market share.”

Falhatpisheh expressed deep regret that President Ebrahim Raisi and chief negotiator Bagheri-Kani “relinquished the management of the talks to the Russians, paving the way for a suitable environment for the Kremlin to pursue its interests”.

Meanwhile, the government owned newspaper Iran which is the mouthpiece of the Raisi Administration wrote on Thursday that Iran might still withdraw from negotiations.

The IRNA commentary on Thursday said that the former US administration had tabled the 12 conditions when it withdrew from JCPOA in 2018. It also claimed that Secretary of State Antony Blinken started indirect negotiations with Iran in 2021 with the same conditions while extending a velvet hand. The US side wanted to include the issues of Iran's ballistic missiles and its regional ambitions in the talks, but Tehran resisted against the "exceeding demands."

IRNA’s claims aside, the Biden Administration, in fact, has been criticized for not including Iran’s missile and regional aggression in the talks, as it always labelled the Vienna negotiations aimed at reviving the JCPOA.

On the other hand, according to the commentary, Tehran demanded lifting US sanctions in a verifiable way and called for guarantees from the United States to ensure that the next US government will not pull out of a new agreement. However, the commentary did not say that Washington has rejected these deamds.

The commentary said that Former US President Donald Trump wanted a deal with Iran that would go beyond the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which he called a longer, stronger deal.

The IRNA commentary quoted Pompeo as having said in May 2018 that the US will impose strong financial pressures on Iran but at the same time will be prepared to start negotiations with Tehran. Within a year, IRNA said Iran convinced the US it will not accept any conditions beyond the JCPOA.

Iran, said the commentary, did not want any issues other than the nuclear to be raised, let alone to be discussed during negotiations. It was at that stage that that Pompeo called for negotiations without preconditions. However, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said that Iran would never go to war with the United States nor start negotiating, IRNA said. When President Joe Biden replaced Trump, Iran realized that the United States was not going to step back from its excessive demands.

"While the US claimed there was no will in Iran to resume negotiations, Washington presented a new JCPOA which it called "JCPOA Plus." The new model also called for an agreement on Iran's missile program and regional policies, but Khamenei insisted that negotiations should be limited to the nuclear issue," the commentary claimed, adding that "the Iranian negotiating team did not accept any solution that would violate Iran's red lines and limit its capabilities. It was this that led the US and its western allies to limit the "new agreement" to the nuclear issue.

Meanwhile, the Iranian government's mouthpiece, Iran newspaper, on Thursday quoted Mostafa Khoshchashm, a political commentator as having said that the United States is likely to start reneging on a deal.

Khoshchashm added that Iran might decide to pull out of the negotiations if this happens. "One of our conditions to start this round of negotiations was that we might react to the other side's dishonesty at any stage. This reaction might lead to our withdrawal from the talks, and this will be unpleasant for the other side," he said, adding that "during the past two or three days the relative optimism about the other side's goodwill has been replaced by pessimism."