Time For Swift Decisions On Iran Deal Or Dangerous Nuclear Crisis – EU

In an opinion piece published by the Time on Monday, Barak said the nuclear agreement – or the JCPOA – failed to delay Iran from having enough highly enriched uranium for nukes, and the 2018 US withdrawal from that same agreement allowed Iran to "legitimize” its progress toward "threshold nuclear" status. “In 2018 they were some 17 months away from that threshold. Today they are probably just 17 days away.” 

Echoing US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s remarks eight months ago that if an agreement is not achieved within weeks, it might not be worth signing, he said that “That’s even more true today” as Iran “kept enriching uranium and has turned from a country that Russia was assigned to monitor into a country supplying Russia with armed drones.”

Describing a new agreement as mainly aimed at keeping for appearances, he said such a deal provides “both sides a ‘denial umbrella’ for domestic needs — for the US, avoiding tougher realities and choices, and, for the Iranians, keeping sanctions at the lightest level possible.”

Noting that Iran will turn into a de-facto threshold nuclear state this summer, he said, “Both Israel and (for sure) the US can operate over the skies of Iran against this or that site or installation and destroy it. But once Iran is a de-facto threshold nuclear state this kind of attack simply cannot delay the Iranians from turning nuclear.”

Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Tuesday that Israel has the ability to stop Iran’s nuclear development or merely delay it, noting, “Iran is a global problem. It is not just Israel’s private problem.”

Florida's Democratic Representative Ted Deutch said on Monday that Tehran’s decision is extremely worrying, underscoring his “deep concern about how any nuclear deal with Iran can be verifiable and enforceable.”

He described the decision as “particularly egregious” after Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reiterated that Iran's nuclear program is "galloping ahead," and saying that the IAEA would lose its understanding of the state of Iran's program if the cameras were not restored in three or four weeks, a window that has since passed. 

“Moreover, Iran also just declared that it will not answer IAEA’s outstanding questions about uranium particles found at undeclared nuclear sites in Iran, directly contradicting the censure resolution that was overwhelmingly passed by the IAEA Board of Governors last month,” Deutch added. Tehran’s relations with the agency have particularly soured since the June’s resolution.

The US congressman highlighted that such announcements “reflect Iran’s dangerously escalatory nuclear behavior,” saying that he is glad about the US commitment to ensure that Iran will never acquire a nuclear weapon – which was strengthened by the Jerusalem Declaration. 

Iran’s atomic chief Mohammad Eslami said Monday Iran would not switch on nuclear-monitoring cameras turned off in June until the 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) is restored.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price in his daily briefing on July 25 said, “And in fact, every day that they drag their feet or every day that is filled with nothing but silence on their end, it’s an indication to us that they are not serious and that they are not ready to re-enter the JCPOA on a mutual basis.”

The comments came one day after chief of Iran's nuclear program, Mohammad Eslami said that Tehran will not allow monitoring equipment of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to operate until the JCPOA is restored.

At the same time, the director general of the IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi told the Spanish newspaper El Pais on July 22 that Iran’s nuclear program is “galloping” forward. He added that enriching uranium at 60 percent is not needed if there are no military intentions, referring to Iran accumulating highly enriched fissile material that can be elevated to weapons-grade uranium in a relatively short time.

Grossi also told CNN on Monday that Iran keeping IAEA’s inspectors away and monitoring cameras off at its nuclear installations leaves the international community blind as to what is really taking place there. “We are saying this is relevant. They have to restore all our inspection capabilities, that if they want to be trusted confidence must be there,” he told CNN and added, “In the nuclear field the only way to have confidence is to be inspected.”

Asked about Iran’s announcement that IAEA cameras will remain turned off until an agreement is reached on JCPOA, Ned Price said this was “extremely regrettable, to put it mildly.” The State Department spokesperson went on to warn that Iran’s behavior regarding inspections “only complicates the challenges associated with a potential mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA. It only deepens the nuclear crisis that Iran itself has created.”

Iran began limiting IAEA inspections and boosting uranium enrichment in early 2021, after the incoming Biden administration had clearly indicated its desire to restore the 2015 nuclear deal.

Price was also asked what Iranians want in order to accept a deal presented to them last December, which the US and its European allies say was a fair offer. He responded that he will Tehran say publicly what they demand and mentioned the possibility that the Iranians may not be planning to restore the JCPOA.

“We are clear-eyed about our Iranian interlocutors. And that’s why for some time we have been preparing equally for scenarios in which there is a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA, and a scenario in which there is not a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA.,” Price said.

But he reiterated the administrqation's position that it will cointinue to pursue the diplomatic path, since it believes a negotiated return to the JCPOA still is in US interest.

He also referred to President Joe Biden’s trip to the Middle East earlier this month and his discussions with Israel and other allies about threats Iran poses to the region. Biden pledged to Israel and Saudi Arabia that the United States would not allow Iran to produce nuclear weapons.

Price said that the contingency of Iran not returning to the JCPOA “was a focus of President Biden’s trip to Israel, and to Saudi Arabia, where he also had an opportunity to meet with leaders of the GCC+3. But these are discussions that we’ve been having for some time.”

Tehran’s relations with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have soured since the agency’s board, made up of 35 member states, passed June’s resolution critical of Iran’s alleged failure to supply adequate information about its pre-2003 nuclear work.

Eslami said Tehran would not go further in answering IAEA questions over this work, despite the dissatisfaction expressed by agency director-general Rafael Mariano Grossi in his report to June’s IAEA board at Iran’s explanation of uranium traces in sites not declared as nuclear-related.

Eslami was quoted by state media as saying the file on pre-2003 work had been “closed” at the time of the 2015 agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). “They should know that closed items will not be reopened,” Eslami said. “The basis of the nuclear accord was a response to those alleged cases.”

Following the passage of the June IAEA board resolution – moved by the United States and three European countries, and opposed by Russia and China with India among those abstaining – Tehran said it would remove some IAEA monitoring equipment, that had been kept in place under a temporary arrangement reached with Grossi in February 2021.

Iran had agreed to this ‘extra’ equipment staying, even though it had decided in December 2020 to reduce cooperation with the agency to the basic level required by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Talks in Vienna tried for a year up to March to reach agreement between Iran and six world powers over restoring the JCPOA, which had imposed strict limits on the nuclear program and gave the IAEA enhanced inspection powers. But when the US in 2018 left the JCPOA and imposed ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions, Tehran responded after 2019 by expanding its nuclear program beyond JCPOA limits and by February 2021, in response to parliamentary legislation restricting IAEA access. The parliamentary bill was introduced the day after the US presidential election and passed after a nuclear scientist was assassinated near Tehran.

‘Politically motivated’

While the role of the IAEA is essentially technical, June’s resolution has further enmeshed it in the wider dispute over JCPOA restoration. The US and Iran, both in Vienna talks and in June’s European Union-mediated talks in Doha, have failed to agree which US sanctions are incompatible with the 2015 agreement.

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said Monday Grossi was displaying "unprofessional, unfair and unconstructive views” and called on him to “refrain from politically motivated statements.”

In an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais published July 22, Grossi said the Iranian program was “advancing at a gallop” while the agency had “very little visibility.” Repeating his remarks reported in May, the IAEA chief was quotedthat “no country that does not have warlike developments enriches at that level, at 60 percent.”

Iran expanded enrichment from the JCPOA limit of 3.67 percent to 4.5 percent in July 2019, and to 20 percent in January 2021 after. President Hassan Rouhani in April 2021, following an attack on the Natanz nuclear facility, announced enrichment to 60 percent, saying the move would enable Iran to attend negotiations“with an even fuller hand.”

In a tweet on Sunday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said that “a nuclear Iran is not a threat only to Israel, but to the entire region and the world.” 

Echoing remarks by the head of the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, the ministry said, "Today what we have is a nuclear program that has grown enormously....” and a country that does not seek nuclear weapons would not enrich uranium to 60 percent.

On July 22, Grossi told Spain's El Pais newspaper that the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program is "galloping ahead" and the IAEA has very limited visibility on what is happening. 

In 2019, Iran began breaching restrictions on its nuclear program following the 2018's pullout of the United States from the 2015 deal, the JCPOA, or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The process accelerated after President Joe Biden’s administration signaled it was ready to return to the JCPOA.

“If there is an agreement, it is going to be very difficult for me to reconstruct the puzzle of this whole period of forced blindness,” Grossi said. “It is not impossible, but it is going to require a very complex task and perhaps some specific agreements.”

Iran would like to see a nuclear agreement taking shape soon, but it will not act with emotion and haste, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Naser Kanaani said Monday.