Iran News Agency Cagey Over EU ‘New Concession’ In Nuclear Talks
The official Iranian news agency IRNA suggested Friday Iran would accept European proposals to revive the 2015 nuclear deal only on several conditions.
The official Iranian news agency IRNA suggested Friday Iran would accept European proposals to revive the 2015 nuclear deal only on several conditions.
IRNA quoted “an Iranian diplomat familiar with the process of negotiations” that a text circulated by Enrique Mora, the European Union coordinator of 14-month nuclear talks, would be “acceptable” if Iran had “confidence in various issues, including political claims related to security, sanctions, and guarantees.”
The IRNA story referred to a story published in the Wall Street Journal “a few hours ago” Friday reporting that the text, which the Journal had seen, had offered “a significant new concession to Tehran” over a probe into uranium traces found in Iran in 2019 by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
According to the Journal, the Mora text suggests Iran would need to agree to address the IAEA concerns over the uranium traces before the revival of the 2015 nuclear agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).
While the IRNA story says other issues remain to be resolved – including ‘guarantees’ Iran has sought that the United States honor a revived agreement – it has been widely reported in recent weeks that the IAEA probe, which relates to work Iran carried out before 2003, is a major obstacle.
‘Settled and closed’
IRNA quoted a tweet from a senior official in the presidential office repeating the insistence of President Ebrahim Raisi, made in conversations with the presidents of France, Russia and China, that Iran would not agree to JCPOA restoration without “security claims…settled and closed.”
The US, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have all argued the IAEA probe, under the agency’s review of Iran’s ‘safeguards’ commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, is unrelated to the JCPOA. But while the Journal’s account says the Mora draft envisages Iran having to satisfy the agency before a renewed JCPOA took effect, it says “other parties in the talks” would then “urge the IAEA Board of member states to close the investigation.”
In 2015, shortly after the JCPOA was agreed by Iran and six world powers, the IAEA published a report, Final Assessment on Past and Present Outstanding Issues Regarding Iran’s Nuclear Programme [sic]. The report both assessed Iran’s pre-2003 work and welcomed the JCPOA, which gave the agency wide powers of inspection that Iran withdrew in 2021 after it began breaching the JCPOA in 2019, the year after the US left the agreement and imposed stringent sanctions.
Uranium traces
The 35-member IAEA board in June passed a resolution, moved by the US and three European states, critical of Iran over its explanations of the uranium traces, which were found by inspectors in 2019 following allegations made by Israel. But while the Journal raised the prospect of the board referring Iran to the United Nations Security Council should it fail to satisfy the IAEA probe, it did not mention Russia and China, who have UNSC vetoes, voting against the June resolution in the IAEA board.
The IRNA story reiterated that Iran continues to review the Mora document. While EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell described it as a “final text,” Iranian officials have said the document is being studied by technical experts before any ‘political’ decision is taken.
The Wall Street Journal quoted a “senior US official” that Washington expected “Iran to provide the agency the information they need… regardless of whether it’s expressed in the text of an understanding or elsewhere.” Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s IAEA ambassador, said in comments published Friday in Izvestia, that with Iran questioning “literally a few lines” he expected the fate of the JCPOA to become clear next week.
Mohammad Marandi, who acts as de facto spokesman on the talks, referred both to the four-day round of meetings in Vienna that concluded Monday and to earlier rounds. “Iran was able to make significant progress in all fields, which of course will be announced in due course,” Marandi told the Young Journalists Club, a state-owned news agency.
Marandi claimed western journalist had told him that “many government elites of Western countries, as well as Persian-language media people based abroad” also regarded the talks as a success for Iran.
The Vienna talks – largely indirect contacts between the United States and Iran mediated by the European Union – ended with senior EU official Enrique Mora circulating a document designed to bridge remaining gaps. While the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called this a “final text,” Iranian officials treated it as a set of proposals needing further review.
Awaiting ‘high-level meeting’
Nour News, affiliated to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, reported late Wednesday that the text was being analyzed “at the experts’ level,” but had not yet been discussed by a “high-level meeting.” The SNSC, made up of 24 of Iran’s leading politicians and military commanders, shapes policy on the nuclear issue, although crucial decisions may come in informal discussions around Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
The nuclear talks, beginning in April 2021 in an effort to revive the 2015 agreement (the JCPOA), have wrestled with intertwined political and technical issues – essentially over which US sanctions introduced after Washington left the JCPOA in 2018 contravene the 2015 agreement and how Iran’s atomic program, expanded since 2019, should be returned to JCPOA limits.
Marandi reiterated that Tehran expects the dropping of “false accusations against Iran in the agency,” a reference to enquiries by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) into Iranian nuclear work before 2003. The US and three European JCPOA signatories argue these enquiries arise under Tehran’s basic obligations as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and have nothing to do with renewing the JCPOA.
Iran, on the other hand, argues that the IAEA concluded investigations into Iran’s past nuclear work in 2015, the year the JCPOA was agreed, and revived them only after allegations made by Israel in 2018, the year the US left the JCPOA.
“Let's not forget that before the previous meeting of the Board of Governors [in June, which passed a resolution critical of Iran], the head of the agency, [Rafael Mariano] Grossi, travelled to Israel,” Marandi said.
Iran had promised earlier this year to provide satisfactory answers to the IAEA regarding questions around its past secret nuclear work, but in late May the agency said it had not received convincing explanations.
Guarded comments
In remarks published Thursday on the Rouydad news website, Hossein Maliki, of the Iranian parliament’s security and foreign policy committee, warned that negotiations could be facing a “dead end…because we see less flexibility in the Americans.”
Maliki said he had not seen the Mora text, but his guarded comments – noting Iran’s “positive opinion” on “some provisions” of a “previous text”, an apparent reference to a document circulated by Borrell in late July – suggested he was hedging while long-term JCPOA opponents argued the talks had failed.
The official news agency IRNA reported that Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, in a telephone conversation with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, expressed hope that “the American side, with a realistic and pragmatic view…will provide the ground for an agreement on the final text.”