US Holds Ground In Nuclear Talks, Insisting Iran Should Make A Move

Borrell said in Germany Friday that Mora’s trip to Tehransince Tuesday had been “positive enough” after the envoy called his meetings in Iran “better than expected.” Mora has chaired year-long nuclear talks in Vienna.

A US State Department spokesman told Iran International late Thursday that Washington welcomed Mora’s “efforts to bring these negotiations to a successful conclusion” but said that the US continued to believe that “Iran needs to make a decision,” and that with talks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (the JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) paused since March, the spokesman insisted Tehran need to make a clear choice.

“We are not negotiatingin public, but if Iran wants sanctions lifting that goes beyond the JCPOA, they will need to address concerns of ours beyond the JCPOA,” the spokesman said. “Conversely, if they do not want to use these talks to resolve other bilateral issues beyond the JCPOA, then we are confident that we can very quickly reach an understanding on the JCPOA...”

A State Department spokesperson was quoted by Barron's on Friday as thanking Mora for his efforts but adding, "That said, at this point a deal remains far from certain."

The Vienna talks have struggled to agree which US sanctions – including those introduced since Washington left the JCPOA in 2018 – violate the agreement, and exactly how Iran should return its nuclear program, expanded since 2019, to JCPOA limits. A major disagreement reportedly remains the US listing Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) as a ‘foreign terrorist organization’ while Iran has also refused to drop calls for retribution for the US killing IRGC general Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad in 2020.

IRGC Issue ‘Beyond The JCPOA’

The State Department spokesman told Iran International Thursday that Washington considered Iran’s request to delist the IRGC as one of several “bilateral issues beyond the JCPOA.” Hence, said the spokesman, “if Iran wants sanctions lifting that goes beyond the JCPOA, they will need to address concerns of ours beyond the JCPOA.”

Iran has given no sign it is drawing back from its insistence that the US is preventing JCPOA revival by insisting on measures incompatible with the agreement including – Tehran says – the IRGC listing.

In a tweet Friday, Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian described Mora’s visit as “another opportunity to focus on initiatives to resolve the remaining issues” while adding that “a good and reliable outcome” was “within reach if the US makes is decisions & adheres to its commitments.”

Echoing Mora’s guarded optimism, a German Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Friday there was “a proposal on the table that is very fair for all sides." But in suggesting Iran needed to “refrain from demands that go beyond the JCPOA” in order to bring “an early conclusion to these talks” the spokesman apparently reflected the US position.

Has the EU squared the circle? In announcing a positive outcome to this week’s contacts, Borrell and Mora may be suggesting Tehran has agreed to continue engagement– possibly through a new process – rather than shifting its position.

The spokesperson made the remarks on Thursday against the backdrop of visits to Tehran by the European Union’s coordinator of the nuclear talks, Enrique Mora, and Qatar’s ruler, Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani. “The administration, along with our Allies, is preparing equally for scenarios with and without a mutual return to full implementation of the JCPOA.”

About the trips by Mora and Al-Thani, the spokesman said Washington is in close contact with the EU coordinator, who continues to convey messages back and forth, and appreciated “the constructive role Qatar has played in our efforts to achieve diplomatic resolutions of important and difficult issues between the US and Iran, including the unjust detention of US citizens and our effort to achieve a mutual return to full implementation of the JCPOA”.

In response to a question about Iran’s demand to remove the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organization, the spokesperson said that "if Iran wants sanctions lifting that goes beyond the JCPOA (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), they will need to address concerns of ours beyond the JCPOA”.

The official added, “Conversely, if they do not want to use these talks to resolve other bilateral issues beyond the JCPOA, then we are confident that we can very quickly reach an understanding on the JCPOA and begin reimplementing the deal”.

On Friday, the EU's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Mora’s trip has unblocked the negotiations, expressing hope for the prospect of reaching an agreement.

Josep Borrell made the remarks at a G7 meeting in northern Germany on Friday as Enrique Mora arrived back in Europe, saying he believes that two months of deadlock in diplomatic efforts has ended.

He described Iran's response as being "positive enough" after Mora had delivered a message that things could not continue as they were, describing his trip as “better than expected.”

He did not say what "unblocked" means and if the suspended talks in Vienna will resume.

"These things can not be resolved overnight. Let's say the negotiations were blocked and they have been unblocked and that means there is the prospect of reaching a final agreement."

Enrique Mora arrived in Tehran for a two-day trip on Tuesday and met with Ali Bagheri-Kani and other Iranian officials, but with no news about the results of the meeting until late evening in Iran.

Talks to restore the deal with world powers have stalled since March, chiefly over Tehran's insistence that Washington remove the US designation of Foreign Terrorist Organization of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), which is the only example of a sovereign state’s armed forces to be included.

A member of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team said on Thursday that removing the terrorist designation of the IRGC is not enough and Tehran wants other guarantees.

Enrique Mora said in a tweet on Friday that “not a single explanation” was given to him, adding that they airport police also took his passport and phones.

The Spanish diplomat criticized the breach of diplomatic rules, emphasizing that he is “an EU official on an official mission holding a Spanish diplomatic passport”.

About an hour later, he said on twitter that he was released. “Now released along with my two colleagues, the EU ambassador to UN Vienna and the head of the EEAS (the European External Action Service) Iran task force”.

Mora added that they “were kept separated” during the short detention and denounced “the refusal to give any explanation for what seems a violation of the Vienna Convention”.

Moreover, Mora said, “While still waiting for continuing my trip to Brussels I want to underline that in Tehran I raised the need to stop execution of Ahmadreza Djalali and asked for his release on humanitarian grounds”.

His comment about Djalali was among the few bits of information that was announced by any official about the content of his meetings in his two-day trip to Iran.

While Iranian state media portrayed the visit as proof of Iran's expansion of ties with regional countries, a source briefed on the visit told Reuters on Sunday that the emir's trip was aimed to bring the parties to the Iran nuclear pact to "a new middle ground".

Almost a year of indirect talks between Tehran and Washington to save the pact has been on hold since March, chiefly over Tehran's insistence that the US remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), its elite security force, from the US Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list.

Washington has made it clear that it has no such plans, while also not ruling it out.

Iran's hardline rulers believe that an uncompromising approach, spearheaded by the country's strongly anti-Western Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, can force Washington to accept Tehran’s demands, Iranian officials told Reuters last month.

Under the 2015 pact, Iran curbed its sensitive uranium enrichment work, a possible pathway to nuclear arms, in return for the lifting of economic sanctions.

But in 2018, then-US President Donald Trump ditched the pact and reimposed sanctions on Iran, prompting Tehran to retaliate by gradually breaching the pact's nuclear curbs.