Iran Says '97-98 Percent' Of A Draft Nuclear Agreement Is Ready

The spokesman of the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, Mahmoud Abbaszadeh-Meshkini, said on Sunday all the Islamic Republic’s demands in the Vienna talks should be met.

"When we say the lifting of all sanctions, it means institutions, companies and individuals; removing the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) from the list of terrorist organizations is also one of the expectations of the Islamic Republic", he said.

Abbaszadeh-Meshkini added that there are five or six issues left in the Vienna talks, which are important and sensitive priorities for the Islamic Republic, noting that these are the country’s red lines.

Last week, 250 out of 290 members of parliament issued a statement urging President Ebrahim Raisi not to agree to any new nuclear deal without ensuring Iran's demands.

Iran has been insisting to obtain a political guarantee from the United States that it would not renege on a new nuclear agreement, and remove all sanctions imposed on Iran, whether for nuclear or other reasons, such as human rights violations or terrorism. The US has said it will remove only nuclear related sanctions.

Earlier In February, Israel urged the US not to remove the IRGC from its list of terrorist groups, saying the IRGC – which has been designated as a terror group since 2019 -- sponsors Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Houthis.

Tehran also and "politically-motivated" claims by UN watchdog IAEA about its past nuclear work to be dropped, Iranian state TV reported.

Iran International reported on Saturday that according to Western and Iranian foreign ministry sources, the United States has given Iran an “immediate deadline” to respond to a final offer it has received in the framework of talks in Vienna.

The West has been warning Iran that time is running out to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement known as JCPOA, while Tehran is enriching more uranium.

According to some of these sources, meetings held in Tehran to make a decision ended inconclusively, while chief negotiator Ali Bagheri-Kani will return to Vienna Sunday night. Iran said Sunday that he will go back to the Austrain capital to “pursue the talks.”

The foreign ministry also demanded on Sunday the International Atomic Energy Agency end its investigation of Tehran’s clandestine nuclear activities in the early 2000s. "We have answered the agency's (IAEA) questions or politically-motivated claims ... that we think were baseless. These dossiers should be closed," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh said, according to state TV's website. "Iran accepts no deadlines."

The IAEA has found traces of fissile material in different sites in Iran and has submitted questions but has not received satisfying explanations.

Mohammad Eslami said on Saturday that the new power plants will be able to generate 10,000 megawatts of electricity, noting that “it is not an easy task, but we have manpower and advanced industries for it”.

Russia commissioned Iran's first nuclear power plant, Bushehr, in 2011. It has one operational unit that generates 1,000 megawatts, providing less than two percent of the country’s electricity.

There are conflicting reports about how much the Bushehr plant coat, with former vice president Es’haq Jahangiri putting it at $8.5 billion and the Carnegie Endowment estimating it at $11 billion that took four decades to complete, making it one of the most expensive reactors in the world.

In January, AEOI spokesman said, “Negotiations are underway between Tehran and Moscow to construct the second and third units of the Bushehr power plant”.

South Korea made UAE’s Barakah nuclear power plant with $24 billion that can generate 5,380 MW and Poland is building a 9,000-MW plant with about €30 billion.

Financially crippled by US sanctions Iran has little capacity to finance such a project. In November, Iran said it needs $160 billion of investmentsin its oil and natural gas industries in the coming years, to avoid becoming a net importer.

Bagheri-Kani will leave for Vienna with a "clear working plan" to resolve the remaining issues and "significant challenges", Nour News which is affiliated with the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), Ali Shamkhani, said Sunday in an "exclusive report".

Nour News said the talks have reached an "agreement or dead-end borderline". "Continuation of the Western sides' unacceptable approach to resolving the remaining issues has unnecessarily dragged the talks and brought about unpredictable circumstances," it said.

Reports received by Iran International on Saturday spoke of a “an immediate deadline” imposed by Washington for receiving a clear answer from Tehran on a draft agreement.

Iran insists on the removal of more sanctions that the United States is willing to lift, verification of sanctions removal, and presentation of “absolutely necessary objective guarantees for the fulfilment of commitments,” Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in an address at the Munich Security Conference on February 19.

Tehran seeks an iron-clad guarantee that the United States will not change its mind in the future as former president Donald Trump did in 2018, withdrawing from the JCPOA.

Some pundits say the Ukraine crisis may delay an agreement on the restoration of the JCPOA, particularly because there has yet been no concrete agreement on exactly which sanctions are to be lifted, the timeframe for the lifting of sanctions and verification, the guarantee that Iran insists on, and the fate of Iran's advanced IR-6 centrifuges.

Iran standing firm on its deamnds

Nour News added that an SNSC meeting last night, which was also attended by members of the negotiation team and Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, has decided that the acceptance of a deal would depend on a decision on these issues.

This means there is no real change in Iran’s position as Bagheri-Kani returns to Vienna. The Biden Administration must decide to continue talks or resort to another strategy as it has said before. So far, the administration seems willing to continue engagement, even with Russia as an active participants in the talks.

Amir-Abdollahian in a tweet Saturday said he had held a phone talk with the EU foreign policy chief Joseph Borrel and that Bagheri-Kani had also been in contact with Enrique Mora, European Union's lead negotiator on Iran's nuclear issue. "Our red lines are made clear to western parties. Ready to immediately conclude a good deal, should they show real will," he wrote.

Deputy Speaker of the Parliament, Abdolreza Mesri, on Sunday said the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee is going to hold an extraordinary session with Amir-Abdollahian Tuesday on the latest developments in Vienna. The parliament held a closed session Sunday morning during which, according to Tasnim News Agency, Ghalibaf offered a report on the current situation of the talks.

Last week over 250 of the 290 lawmakers of the Iranian parliament in a letter to President Ebrahim Raisi demanded that all sanctions, including those related to terrorism, missile development and human rights and those imposed by the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA), the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), and CAATSA U-Turn, should be lifted.

Morteza Mahmoudvand, a member of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee on Sunday said news from agreements made in Vienna were worrying and the government should be held to account if it failed to comply with the parliament's controversial legislation of December 2020.

The legislation which the administration of President Hassan Rouhani said unnecessarily escalated the nuclear standoff with the West obliged the government to start 20 percent uranium enrichment, in breach of the JCPOA) and to halt Iran's voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Other information points to a deadline set by the United States, which the hardliner Iranian news website Mehr in Tehran has quickly denied.

Western diplomatic sources and sources in Iran have told Iran International TV correspondents that if remaining issues in the talks are not resolved in the next few days and an agreement not reached, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA, will be deemed “dead.”

On the other hand, information obtained shows that meetings in Tehran after the return of chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri-Kani have ended inconclusively.

Sources in Iran’s foreign ministry have told Iran International that Washington had presented “an immediate” deadline to Iran for proposals for reviving the 2015 agreement submitted by “the West” – possibly meaning the US and the three western European signatories France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

These foreign ministry sources said that in one meeting, the Supreme National Security Council Friday, in the presence of Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, did not reach consensus and took no decision over “a draft agreement presented in Vienna.” It was not clear which of the world powers in the Vienna talks, which include Russia and China, had endorsed the “draft agreement.”

The United States and its three European partners, the United Kingdom, France and Germany have not accepted Iran’s demand to provide guarantees regarding the permanent nature of the agreement and demands of economic nature Supreme Leader Khamenei has been insisting on.

One of the challenges in the talks has been Iran’s request for guarantees that the US would not again leave the JCPOA, and that Iran, as under JCPOA terms, would not be impeded in its economic relations internationally. The official news agency IRNA on Saturday once again highlighted this issue of guarantees.

The Biden Administration has said that constitutionally it cannot provide guarantees that the US would not leave the JCPOA. Neither the 2015 deal, nor the 2018 withdrawal, nor the many sanctions introduced by President Trump as executive orders after 2018, went to Congress for approval.

Iran International’s information indicates that Iran is insisting on the lifting of “all US sanctions” and “the closure of a pending case at the International Atomic Energy Agency” regarding alleged clandestine nuclear activities before 2003, when Iran reportedly imported machinery from the network of Pakistani scientist AQ Khan.

The US and its three European allies have been warning for months that time to reach an agreement in Vienna is limited and Iran must make a decision.

Tehran has been enriching uranium up to 60 percent since early 2021 and stockpiling fissile material. The West and other countries are concerned that this is taking the Islamic Republic closer to nuclear weapons or at least brings it to point of a nuclear threshold state.

A senior US State Department official on Friday told reporters that “significant progress” has been made in the past week or so, but “serious issues remain” unresolved.

It is not clear what impact the Russian invasion of Ukraine would have on the Vienna process, as Moscow has been playing an active role in the talks. The unprecedented crisis in the international order triggered by Russia’s actions could convince Iran to make a deal with the West or equally it could convince Tehran to insist on its demands, waiting to see how the unfolding events