Former Iranian Diplomat Says No Hope For Nuclear Deal, Conflict Likely

UANI said in a statement Friday it had contacted the banks “to inquire about the nature of their relationship with the Iranian regime and call upon each to cut ties with Tehran.” The group said each bank had dollar accounts “ultimately controlled by Iranian firms and banking institutions sanctioned by the United States.”

As part of ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions introduced in 2018 on leaving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order threatening punitive US action against any third party dealing with Iran’s financial sector.

China, other world powers, and rights groups all condemned the move, and while Beijing’s bilateral trade fell 34 percent to $23 billion in 2019, China still bought Iranian oil, thwarting Trump’s stated aim of ending Iran’s crude exports.

UANI approached the Zhejiang Mintai Commercial Bank, ICBC, China Guangfa Bank, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, Zhejiang Tailong Commercial Bank, and Zhejiang Chouzhou Commercial Bank.

UANI’s Chief Executive Officer Mark Wallace, said a lack of firm US action alongside “warm and abiding ties between Tehran and the Chinese Communist Party has given Chinese financial institutions confidence that there is no consequence for aiding the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.” Earlier in June, UANI claimed Chinese petrochemical refiners, or "teapots," had bought $22 billion of Iranian crude since President Joe Biden took office.

Hossein Shariatmadari said in an interview with Fars news, affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, that several sabotage operations against Iran's nuclear facilities and assassinations of the country's nuclear scientists have been carried out using information gathered by Mossad and CIA spies under the cover of IAEA inspectors.

He referred to a 2015 article by Joshua Rovner from the Brookings institute that had said, “Not only will intelligence agencies benefit from inspection reports dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, but they will be free to explore other areas of Iran’s scientific and associated industrial infrastructure.”

Criticizing the recent visit by the International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi to Israel ahead of the IAEA Board of Governors’ meeting, Shariatmadari said the UN watchdog must explain whether Iran is dealing with the agency or Israel in the nuclear issue. 

Grossi was in Israel in advance of a meeting of the IAEA board scheduled for June 6-10, set to discuss Grossi's report saying that Tehran has failed to give satisfactory responses to agency queries over its nuclear work before 2003. On Friday, Iran described the visit as one of the "Zionist" plans against the revival of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

The Israeli premier last week issued documents from 2004-05 purporting to show that Iran used confidential IAEA files to mislead agency inspectors. This fueled reports that the United States or European states might move a resolution critical of Iran at next week’s meeting.

Following a report from the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency this week expressing dissatisfaction at Iran’s answers to queries over its pre-2003 nuclear work, the US and E3 – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom – have been discussing moving a resolution at the 35-member IAEA board meeting June 6-10.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian Friday that Moscow was in “definite opposition” to such a move The Iranian foreign minister told Lavrov that such a resolution would contradict the diplomatic process wherebyTehran and Washington exchanged notes over the past two months through Europeans.

Echoing a Chinese view expressed Thursday, Lavrov said that such a resolution would have “no positive impact” and that “issues of cooperation between IAEA and Iran should be resolved within IAEA’s technical path.”

Over the past year, the US and E3 have held back from moves critical of Iran’s co-operation with the IAEA so as not to undermined negotiations in Vienna over reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), which the US left in 2018.

But questions over Iran’s pre-2003 nuclear work, and alleged lack of transparency over it, were recently revived by documents from 2004-5 released by Israel purporting to show Iranian efforts to hoodwink IAEA inspectors using information gleaned from purloined agency documents. This has blurred the distinction between the supposed ‘technical’ issues dealt with the agency and the ‘political’ process of JCPOA renewal.

‘Shrinking’

The administration of President Joe Biden, which came to office committed to re-joining the JCPOA as a means to gain cap Iran’s nuclear program, has insisted that not all US sanctions put in place by the previous administration of President Donald Trump contravene the 2015 agreement. Reports have suggested the 2019 listing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a ‘foreign terrorist organization’ is a particular sticking point.

Joseph Borrell, the European Union foreign affairs chief, tweeted Saturday after a phone-call to Amir-Abdollahian that while the chance of reviving the JCPOA was “shrinking,” it could still be done “with an extra effort.” Borrell wrote he would “stand ready any time to facilitate a solution to the latest outstanding issues.”

US State Department Spokesman Ned Price said May 31 that the JCPOA revival was “absolutely within reach” and that the US would continue efforts to revive the deal as long as this held out clear non-proliferation benefits. But Iran’s accumulation of uranium enriched to 60 percent, the most serious violation of its JCPOA limits since 2019, has strengthened domestic criticism of Biden, both from JCPOA critics and from those arguing Biden needs urgently to revive the agreement.

Price Friday cited Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaking with Oman’s Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr al-Busaidi to thank him for efforts to mediate both over the current truce in Yemen and to discuss Iran.

The website, which takes a centrist political position, argued Iran faced a stark choice between reviving the deal – the JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – or announcing its death.

The suspension in March of Iran’s year-long negotiations with world powers in Vienna coincided with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which complicated the situation. There have been no subsequent signs of rapprochement between the United States and Iran.

In the latest round of exchanges, the US State Department Spokesman Ned Price blamed the talks’ suspension on Tehran raising demands beyond the JCPOA. Iran has long argued that sanctions introduced by President Donald Trump – no matter whether under rubrics of ‘human rights’ or ‘terrorism’ – were designed to stymie subsequent efforts to revive the JCPOA, from which Trump withdrew the US in 2018.

Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has said the Biden Administration's inaction has left diplomacy in suspended animation, and that agreement over reviving the JCPOA was a simple matter of all parties honoring commitments.

With the US and the three European JCPOA signatories considering a resolution at next week’s IAEA board critical of Iran for failing to satisfy the agency over its pre-2003 nuclear work, China Thursday said such a move would undermine JCPOA negotiations. Qatar and Oman have been trying to mediate.

Iran Diplomacy website suggested that with the Vienna talks suspended, the US, France, Germany, and the United States might persuade the 35-member IAEA board “to make a political decision and issue a resolution that would send Iran's case to the UNSC [United Nations Security Council]."

‘Technical,’ and ‘political’

Qasem Mohebali, a former Iranian diplomat, told Nameh News website, that a report from IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi on the pre-2003 work, which leaked May 30, was ‘technical’ whereas any decision by the UNSC would be political. In very different circumstances in 2005-6, Iran’s expansion of its nuclear program led to a referral from the IAEA to the UNSC, which imposed multilateral sanctions with the support of both Russia and China.

Mohebali said that any IAEA board decision would be made purely on votes cast by the 35 member states, and that the outcome “depends on how US and Europe can garner support for their idea.”

Political commentator Javad Arianmanesh told Nameh News that the JCPOA was likely to fall aside. " In that case, things can become more difficult for Iran," he said. Arianmanesh argued “the most important obstacle on the way of any settlement" was the disagreement between Tehran and Washington over the US listing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a ‘foreign terrorist organization.’

Arianmanesh argued that the “fate of the country’s economy” depended on lifting US sanctions, and that “the longer the suspension of the talks continues” the more difficult “everything” would be for Iran.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told Rafael Mariano Grossi, head of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in Jerusalem Friday that while Israel wanted a diplomatic resolution to tensions over Iran’s nuclear program it could act independently in “self-defense.”

IRNA said, “destructive actions to put pressure on the West” not to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), while year-long talks remain in limbo

IRNA went on to say that Bennett’s words, following this week’s Israeli drills with hundreds of strike aircraft billed as plans for strikes against Iran, were “contradictory.”

Grossi was in Israel in advance of a meeting of the IAEA board scheduled for June 6-10, which is set to discuss the IAEA chief’s recent report saying that Tehran has failed to give satisfactory responses to agency queries over its nuclear work before 2003.

Although Israel is one of four countries – alongside India, North Korea, and Pakistan – that has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and is believed to hold over 150 nuclear bombs, Bennett said he supported the IAEA mission as a professional and independent body.

The Israeli premier last week issued documents from 2004-05 purporting to show that Iran used confidental IAEA files to mislead agency inspectors. This fueled reports that the United States or European states might move a resolution critical of Iran at next week’s IAEA board meeting.

The US and Europe have hesitated over the past year in pursuing such a course in fear that it might stymie year-long Vienna talks to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). The 2015 deal limited Iran’s nuclear program but has been exceeded by Iran since 2019, the year after the US left the JCPOA and imposed ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions.

‘Sunset clauses’

Israel reportedly this week presented the US with a plan to extend the JCPOA indefinitely by scrapping the ‘sunset clauses’ that limit most restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program to ten or 15 years. Should Iran refuse, Israel recommends imposing sanctions still tougher than the current ones.

No Iranian government has shown any inclination to agree to such terms unilaterally, and leaders have expressed defiance in the face of Israeli threats of military action.On Thursday, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, told Norway’s NRK that Israel “can only attack Iran in its dreams.” Bagheri Kani said that if Israelis had such a dream “they will never wake up from it.”

China criticized Thursday any plans to censure Iran at the IAEA board, which it said would undermine continuing efforts to salvage the JCPOA. The IAEA recent reported that Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent, near the level requited for a crude weapon, has risen in three months by 10kg (22lb) to reach43.3kg (95lb). Tehran has long denied any intention of developing an atomic arsenal.