Iran Sees No Reason To Negotiate As US Allows Oil Exports

The Beacon piece is based on a State Department memo apparently unclassified after legal action under the Freedom of Information Act by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a conservative Christian group. The memo records views expressed by then Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in an off-the-record meeting October 2018 at the residence of Iran’s UN ambassador in New York residence with “a group of US former ambassadors and policy analysts.”

Both the Beacon and the ACLJ, which highlighted the memo on its website May 24, see proof of secret dealings between former officials in the Obama administration and Iran to undermine President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Five months earlier, in May 2018, Trump had announced the US would leave the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), reached under the Obama administration, and introduce stringent economic sanctions.

“The meeting took place around the same time John Kerry was reported to be working behind-the-scenes with Iranian officials to salvage the 2015 nuclear accord,” the Beacon noted. The memo, the Beacon argued, was “the firmest proof to date that Obama-era officials were engaged in back-channel efforts to keep negotiations with Iran alive.”

Pompeo ‘was not aware’

The controversy over Obama officials’ links with Iran surfaced back in 2018. Kerry, Obama’s secretary of state when the JCPOA was signed, denied accusations from Pompeo and Trump made in September 2018 that he had met Iranian officials subsequent to the May 2018 Trump decision for the US to leave the JCPOA. Kerry said he had met Zarifafter leaving office in January 2017.

The unclassified memo names no Americans present in the meeting, and such off-the-record meetings are common. Given the memo is a State Department document, it seems certain the meeting was approved at some level within the department. The Beacon, which talked to Pompeo after receiving the memo, reported however that Pompeo “was not aware of these meetings [presumably the meeting recorded in the memo] while leading the State Department” (from April 2018 until January 2021).

The memo records views expressed by Zarif over Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and other regional issues, but nothing of what any of the Americans said. The Iranian foreign minister says he expects Trump to be a two-term president and suggests the US abandoning the JCPOA had shifted Iranian popular opinion towards believing engagement with the US would not work.

‘Back channel pow-wows’

Pompeo, now senior counsel for global affairs at the ACLJ, told the Beacon that the “memo corroborates reports from the time about Kerry's efforts to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal through back-channel pow-wows with Iranian officials.”

Former officials were, Pompeo said, “trying, at every turn, to work with the foreign minister for a terrorist regime, Iran, to undermine the very sanctions put in place by America. It's worse than not knowing when to get off stage. Actively seeking to protect the terrible deal they struck, these former officials – two years after Obama left office – were signaling that Iran should stand firm against America."

The AVLJ says State Department “awareness of or involvement with Obama-era US officials” amounted to “the Deep State.” Its assessment of the memo implies that Kerry, Robert Malley, now the White House special Iran envoy, and Ernest Moniz, energy secretary under Obama, might have been at the meeting, since its release “was only responsive to our FOIA request [request under the Freedom of Information Act] if it involved former high level Obama officials…Kerry…Malley...or…Moniz...”

The story may not be finished. The ACLJ says it will continue litigation to release a 2017 letter from Kerry to Zarif held by the State Department. “We will keep you up to date as this case progresses,” the ACLJ promised Tuesday.

Demanding the immediate release of the seized ship and its confiscated cargo, the Iranian foreign ministry’s department for American Affairs said in a statement on Friday, “The Swiss chargé d'affaires was summoned to convey Iran’s concern and strong protest over the continued violation of international laws and maritime conventions concerning free navigation and trade by the US administration.”

According to the statement, the Swiss envoy assured that he would convey Iran’s message to American officials.

On Wednesday, the Islamic Republic summoned the Greek chargé d'affaires to protest the seizure of the vessel carrying Iranian crude.

The Russia-flagged aframax Lana, formerly named Pegas, was detained on April 15 by Greek authorities and had been waiting at Karistos port pending a court ruling. On Monday afternoon, a tanker owned by Dynacom Tankers Management, called Ice Energy, was chartered by the US Department of Justice and started a ship-to-ship transfer of the US-sanctioned Iranian crude on the basis of Russian sanctions.

The operation, first reported by watchdog group United Against Iran, was verified using Lloyd's List intelligence data.

Lana, which arrived off Greece early in April with reports of a possible mechanical failure and anchored south of the Greek island of Evia, was identified as the Russian-flagged Pegas and the assumption at the time was that it was laden with Russian crude.

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in a Thursday interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria at World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in the Swiss city of Davos that the Islamic Republic still considers the removal of Western economic sanctions as a key stumbling block in the Vienna talks to restore the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

He said from Tehran’s point of view, the administration of President Joe Biden is continuing Donald Trump's maximum pressure policy, stressing the need to lift the Trump administration’s sanctions in order to see progress at the talks.

He said Iran is “keeping the window of diplomacy open,” noting that delisting the IRGC is not the main snag hindering a deal as long as Iran is guaranteed economic benefits.

“In fact, the IRGC being on the US blacklist of terrorist groups is a secondary issue that has been magnified by the pro-Israeli lobby and our main priority is the interests of the Iranian nation,” Iran’s top diplomat said.

“Now, we have reached a point that if the American side makes a realistic decision, an agreement would be within reach,” he said, adding that “Zionists do not want an agreement in the Vienna talks... Zionists tell many lies about Iran’s nuclear issue, but Americans know exactly what they must do if they want to return to the JCPOA.”

Amir-Abdollahian’s statement about IRGC’s terror listing as a minor issue contradicts remarks by Iranian officials who have said Tehran’s demand to delist the entity is “red line”.

Fars news agency, close to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, cited the Defense Ministry on Thursday that investigations into the cause of the Wednesday evening “industrial accident” were underway.

“On Wednesday evening, in an accident that took place in one of the research units of the Defense Ministry in the Parchin area, engineer Ehsan Ghadbeigi was martyred and one of his colleagues injured,” the ministry said.

The ministry did not elaborate on the accident or provide further details, but identified the engineer who died as Ehsan Ghadbeigi. IntelliTimes blog said that he specialized in mechanical engineering at Sheriff University and worked in materials-related fields, that could integrate with Iran's missile or nuclear programs.

Located 60 kilometers (37 miles) southeast of Tehran, Parchin is a sensitive military site housing several industrial and research units, where Western security services believe Iran carried out tests related to nuclear bomb detonations more than a decade ago. It is also closely linked with the Khojir missile production complex.

The International Atomic Energy Agency previously said it suspected Iran conducted tests of explosive triggers that could be used in nuclear weapons at the site.

In 2015, Tehran allowed the UN nuclear watchdog to take environmental samples at the military site to make an assessment of "possible military dimensions" of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

Iran’s missile and space programs have suffered a series of mysterious explosions in recent years. In 2020, a giant explosion occurred in the area of Parchin at a gas storage facility, rattling the capital and sending a massive fireball into the sky near Tehran.

Iran has accused Israel of carrying out several attacks on facilities linked to its nuclear program and of killing its nuclear scientists over the past years.

Last April, Natanz nuclear facility in the central province of Esfahan was hit by what Iran described as "sabotage" a day after it unveiled feeding gas to several centrifuges. A blackout that seemed to have been caused by a deliberately planned blast hit the nuclear facility, causing damage to the electrical distribution grid.

Iranian officials, including the then-head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi, as well as several Israeli media said this operation was a cyber-attack carried out by the Mossad intelligence service.

"Condemning this despicable move, the Islamic Republic of Iran emphasizes the need for the international community and the International Atomic Energy Agency to deal with this nuclear terrorism," Salehi said, adding that "Iran reserves the right to take action against the perpetrators."

Israel publicly rejected to confirm or deny any responsibility for the incident. The attack included a cyber-warfare known as the Olympic Games that involved the use of the Stuxnet computer virus, destroying hundreds of centrifuges.

The ministry said it notified the Greek envoy of his country's "international obligations" regarding the vessel's emergency stop due to a technical difficulty.

The Russia-flagged aframax Lana, formerly named Pegas, was detained on April 15 by Greek authorities and had been waiting at Karistos port pending a court ruling. On Monday afternoon, a tanker owned by Dynacom Tankers Management, called Ice Energy, was chartered by the US Department of Justice and started a ship-to-ship transfer of the US-sanctioned Iranian crude on the basis of Russian sanctions.

The operation, first reported by watchdog group United Against Iran, was verified using Lloyd's List intelligence data.

The head of the Mediterranean and East European affairs at the Iranian ministry condemned Greece’s "unacceptable" surrender to "illegal" US sanctions, saying the "seizure of the cargo of the ship with the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran was an example of international piracy."

Lana, which arrived off Greece early in April with reports of a possible mechanical failure and anchored south of the Greek island of Evia, was identified as the Russian-flagged Pegas and the assumption at the time was that it was laden with Russian crude.

"The seizure came at the request of the Americans because the cargo came from a sanctioned country and moved on a sanctioned ship," a Greek official told Dow Jones on Wednesday.