Tehran Abuzz With Contradicting Views On Nuclear Talks In Doha

A European Union official said the negotiations with Iran "might not make it over the finishing line" and a US official expressed the view that the odds had lengthened after two days of talks in Qatar.

The UN Security Council met to discuss Iran one day after the talks ended in Doha with no sign of progress on resurrecting the pact.

"I am concerned that we might not make it over the finishing line. My message is: Seize this opportunity to conclude the deal, based on the text that is on the table," European Union Ambassador to the United Nations Olof Skoog said.

The EU coordinates the talks on resurrecting the agreement, which then US President Donald Trump reneged on in 2018 and restored crippling US sanctions on Iran, prompting Tehran to start violating its nuclear restrictions about a year later.

"The prospects for a deal after Doha are worse than they were before Doha and they will be getting worse by the day," the senior US official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

"You could describe Doha at best as treading water, at worst as moving backwards. But at this point treading water is for all practical purposes moving backwards," he added.

The Security Council met to discuss the latest report by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the implementation of a 2015 council resolution that enshrines the nuclear deal, formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

US, British and French diplomats all placed the onus on Iran for the failure to revive the agreement after more than a year of negotiations.

Iran "should urgently take this deal - there will not be a better one," Britain's U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward said.

Iranian government media on Friday carried headlines saying the exact opposite, that the onus is on the US to provide more guarantees over the longevity of the deal and more economic benefits.

The US says that in December a final offer was made to Iran, and it will not accept Tehran’s attempts to introduce new elements into the negotiations and make demands “extraneous” to the nuclear issue.

When after 11 months of talks in Vienna the process came to a halt, it became apparent that Iran was demanding the removal of its Revolutionary Guard from the US Foreign Terrorist Organization list. Washington says that is not one of the sanctions related to the nuclear issue.

"Iran has yet to demonstrate any real urgency to conclude a deal, end the current nuclear crisis and achieve important sanctions lifting," Richard Mills, Deputy US Ambassador to the United Nations, told the meeting.

"Not only has Iran not taken up the offer on the table, but it also added yet more issues which fall outside the JCPOA with maximalist and unrealistic demands," French U.N. Ambassador Nicolas de Riviere said.

Iran, however, described the latest talks as "serious and positive" and said it was ready to strike an agreement.

"Iran has demanded verifiable and objective guarantees from the US that JCPOA will not be torpedoed again, that the US will not violate its obligations again, and that sanctions will not be re-imposed under other pretexts or designations," Iran's UN Ambassador Majid Takht Ravanchi told the council.

The senior US official disputed Tehran's argument that Washington was to blame for the lack of progress, saying the United States had responded positively to proposed EU changes to the draft text of an agreement reached in wider talks in March while Iran had failed to respond to those proposals.

"Their vague demands, reopening of settled issues, and requests clearly unrelated to the JCPOA all suggests to us ... that the real discussion that has to take place is (not) between Iran and the US to resolve remaining differences. It is between Iran and Iran ," the senior US official said.

"At this point, we are not sure if they (the Iranians) know what more they want. They didn’t come to Doha with many specifics," he added.

However, Chinese and Russian diplomats faulted the United States, with Beijing's representative urging Washington to ease unilateral US sanctions on Iran and Russia's calling for all sides to show flexibility.

Reporting by Reuters

"The prospects for a deal after Doha are worse than they were before Doha and they will be getting worse by the day," said the official on condition of anonymity. "You could describe Doha at best as treading water, at worst as moving backwards. But at this point treading water is for all practical purposes moving backwards."

After a pause in the 11-month-long Vienna round of nuclear talks in March, the European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell visited Tehran on June 25 and arranged the talks in Qatar.

The official would not go into the details of the Doha talks, in which European Union officials shuttled between the two sides trying to revive the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement under which Iran had limited its nuclear program in return for relief from economic sanctions.

"Their vague demands, reopening of settled issues, and requests clearly unrelated to the JCPOA all suggests to us ... that the real discussion that has to take place is (not) between Iran and the US to resolve remaining differences," he said. "It is between Iran and Iran to resolve the fundamental question about whether they are interested in a mutual return to the JCPOA."

Report by Reuters

In a Thursday statement ahead of a Security Council meeting on the implementation of resolution 2231 that endorsed the 2015 nuclear deal, the E3 said, “Unfortunately... Iran once again refused to seize the opportunity and, instead, made new extraneous and unrealistic demands,” referring to indirect Tehran-Washington talks held in Doha this week.

Criticizing Iran’s installation and use of additional advanced centrifuges and the removal of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s JCPOA-related surveillance and monitoring equipment, they said some of the most serious steps to accelerate the pace of Tehran’s nuclear program have been taken during the negotiation process aimed at returning Iran and the US to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. 

Expressing deep concerns over Iran’s increasing uranium stockpiles enriched to 20-60 percent purity, the E3 said, “Iran’s complete termination of key JCPOA-related transparency measures is therefore a particularly negative, counterproductive and provocative step, which the UN Security Council cannot remain silent on.”

They also denounced Iran’s “provocative” launch of the Zolfaqar Satellite rocket, which could be capable of delivering nuclear weapons and can be used to construct long-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

“We strongly condemn Iran’s continued destabilizing activity in the region and call upon Iran to stop all ballistic missile activities and proliferation inconsistent with UNSCR 2231,” they concluded.

Benchmark Brent crude was around $116 a barrel Thursday, with theJoint Ministerial Monitoring Committee of Opec+, led by Russia and Saudi Arabia, rubber-stamping previously agreed quotas in Vienna.

Reuters news agency Thursday cited Iranian officials claiming Tehran had felt little pressure to give way to the United States in Doha. “We are in no rush,” one said. “Our nuclear program is advancing every day. Time is on our side… we want a deal that 100 percent serves our national interests. We want a good deal.”

At the United Nations Security Council in New York, Ireland’s Byrne Nason, the facilitator of resolution 2231, by which the UNSC in 2015 endorsed the nuclear deal (the JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), reiterated the resolution’s call for “member States…to take such actions as may be appropriate to support the implementation of JCPOA.”

In a statement to the security council, the three European JCPOA signatories – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom – laid all blame for failure to restore the JCPOA with Iran, which they charged had “refused to seize this diplomatic opportunity.”

The US left the JCPOA in 2018, introducing stringent third-party sanctions that the administration of President Donald Trump said would reduce Iran’s oil exports from around 2.5 million bpd to zero. But Tehran has maintained a low level of exports, claiming its oil revenue March 21- May 21 was up 60 percent year-on-year, and has since 2019 expanded its nuclear program beyond JCPOA limits.

‘Keep working’

In announcing by tweet Wednesday the ending the US-Iran Doha talks without the “progress…hoped-for,” Enrique Mora, the senior European Union official coordinating the talks, said “we will keep working with even greater urgency to bring back on track a key deal for non-proliferation and regional stability.”

Iran said Doha had floundered because the US had failed to offer assurances it would not, after returning to the JCPOA, keep what the JCPOA called “discriminatory regulatory and procedural requirements in lieu of the sanctions.” But Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Nasser Kanani said Wednesday that the talks had been “held in a professional and serious atmosphere,” implying the process might continue.

The US State Department said the lack of breakthrough in Doha came from Iran “raising issues wholly unrelated to the JCPOA” and not being ready “to make a fundamental decision on whether it wants to revive the deal or bury it.” There were also suggestions that Iran had raised International Atomic Energy Agency questioning of uranium traces found at three sites used before 2003 – a matter unrelated to the JCPOA, but which led the IAEA board to pass a critical resolution earlier this month.

‘Destabilizing’

Washington’s overall stance was outlined to the Senate in May by Robert Malley, the US special envoy who led US negotiators in Qatar. Malley told senators Washington would continue diplomacy to restore the JCPOA as long as “we assess that the non-proliferation benefits of a return to the deal are worth the sanctions lifting we would need to provide.”

Critics of the JCPOA argue either that benefits never existed or no longer do so. In London, the Daily Telegraph reported Thursday that three former ministers would back a parliamentary motion calling for a fresh agreement that would last longer than the JCPOA, require stricter monitoring, and cover “Iran’s other destabilising [sic] activities in the region,” a reference to its various alliances.

A State Department spokesperson said, "While we are very grateful to the EU for its efforts, we are disappointed that Iran has, yet again, failed to respond positively to the EU's initiative and therefore no progress was made," adding that “Iran raised issues wholly unrelated to JCPOA and apparently isn't ready to make fundamental decision on whether it wants to revive JCPOA or bury it.”

The spokesperson said that "in Doha, as before, we made clear our readiness to quickly conclude and implement a deal on mutual return to full compliance with the JCPOA based on almost a year and a half of negotiations."

A senior administration official also said Wednesday that the talks were left in a stagnant spot, "which at this point means backwards."

Following months of standstill after numerous rounds of talks in Vienna since April 2021, Iran agreed to new talks with the US following a recent visit to Tehran by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

EU's envoy Enrique Mora also confirmed that the indirect talks between Tehran and Washington in Qatar ended without progress.

It is not clear how the Biden administration deal with the failure to reach an agreement with Tehran, as its nuclear program continues to expand.