Info Leaked From Iran Details More 'Concessions' By Washington

According to Alireza Pakfetrat, the representative of Shiraz in the parliament, the number of passenger planes that remain operational have decreased as well as the number of flights in the country. 

He added that the quality and technical upkeep of the aircraft have also suffered significantly, causing flight delays. 

Criticizing Roads and Urban Development Ministry, he said it is spending most of its time and budget on housing projects and forgets that the aviation industry is also part of their responsibilities. 

He also proposed splitting the ministry in two: one for urban development and one for road and transportation, which was the case in the past.

According to Alireza Barkhor, the deputy chairman of the Association of Iranian Airlines, more than 50 percent of Iran’s passenger planes are grounded due to lack of spare parts, particularly engines.

Iran has suffered from shortages of civilian airliners since the 1990s and used a variety of ways to lease older planes or buy spare parts through intermediaries, but the technical state of its fleet has been deteriorating.

The 2015 nuclear agreement (JCPOA) suspended sanctions on purchases of Western aircraft and Iran began talks to buy new planes from Boeing and Airbus. A few airbus planes were delivered but the Trump administration never approved sale of US planes until Washington withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018 and reimposed sanctions.

The Solidify Iran Sanctions Act 2022 – brought forward by senators Tim Scott (R-SC), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), and Jacky Rosen (D-NV) ­– would abolish the ‘sunset’ clauses in the 1996 Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) set to expire 2026.

The ISA, originally the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act, first aimed at thwarting Iran’s attempts to develop its energy sector but was most significant in developing ‘third party’ sanctions. The ISA laid out ‘triggers’ that would allow the president to take punitive action against third parties dealing with Iran.

The ‘triggers,’ amended and extended by later laws, included annual investment over $20 million, constructing pipelines, specified weapons sales, sales of gasoline to Iran, transporting or buying Iranian crude, and dealing with named Iranian bodies including the National Iranian Oil Company and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

Most ISA provisions were suspended when the US in 2015 agreed with Iran and five other world powers the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), under which Tehran accepted limitations on its nuclear program linked to intrusive inspections in return for eased international sanctions.

But these provisions were reapplied when President Donald Trump in 2018 withdrew the US from the JCPOA and imposed ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions.In October 2018, the Trump administration withdrew from the 1955 Iran-US Friendship Treaty after the International Court of Justice ruled aspects of ‘maximum pressure’ violated the treaty, and in 2019 the US threatened to punish any European companies trading with Iran through Instex, the special purpose vehicle set up to sidestep US sanctions.

The new US legislation has been introduced as 16-month talks with Iran and world powers to revive the JCPOA are currently focused on Iran’s response to a European Union text circulated August 8. While the talks have been treated largely as confidential by all parties, some of the trickiest issues reportedly concern the extent and application of US sanctions.

Sanctions guarantees

One of the major stumbling blocks remaining to JCPOA renewal is reportedly Iran’s demands for ‘guarantees’ over the US implementing the agreement should be it be revived. Tehran is seeking cushions, both over sanctions and in its nuclear program, against the US once again leaving the 2015 agreement.

The practical effect of the proposed legislation would be not so much on US policy, where implementation rests primarily with the president, but on keeping the sanctions infrastructure indefinitely in place and therefore readily revived.

“The United States, Israel, and our Arab partners remain concerned about the looming threat that a nuclear Iran poses to the stability of the region,” said Scott. “US sanctions are a necessary deterrent for this dangerous and unstable regime, which is why my bill will make the cornerstone of sanctions on Iran permanent.” The legislation is supported by lobbyists American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Iran's oil and natural gas production have fallen behind in investments and as a result they are unable to extract higher amounts of energy despite the country's vast reserves. Iran has failed to appropriate sufficient funds and has lacked Western technology for boosting production as oil and gas fields produce less over time.

Iran's oil minister Javad Owji has said that the country needs $160 billion dollars for immediate investments while it has lost hundreds of billions in the past 12 years because of international and US sanctions.

According to Yonhap, South Korea's vice foreign minister Cho Hyun-dong held back-to-back separate phone calls Friday with US special envoy for Iran Robert Malley and EU coordinator Enrique Mora to share the latest progress in negotiations to revive the JCPOA nuclear accord. 

During the phone talks, Cho reaffirmed Seoul's support for restoring the agreement and expressed hope that a deal could help resolve South Korea's pending issues related to Iran.

Bilateral relations between Seoul and Teheran remain frayed after two South Korean banks locked $7-9 billion of Iranian funds owed for oil imports because of US banking sanctions, which were reimposed after former President Donald Trump in 2018 withdrew from the deal.

Iran, which sits on the world's fourth-largest oil reserves, was a key oil supplier to South Korea, and a main importer of goods such as industrial equipment, household appliances and vehicle parts.

Seoul stopped purchasing Iranian oil in May 2019 due to sanctions that banned the Islamic republic's oil exports.

In response to a question about a report that the EU-proposed text of the agreement goes beyond the redlines of the Biden administration, Price said on Thursday that “it is no question that we have tactical differences with our Israeli partners when it comes to this question, the JCPOA. There is also no question that when it comes to the strategic objective, the overarching objective, we see entirely eye to eye.” Axios had reported that the Israeli prime minister sent a message to the White House saying the Biden administration should walk away from the deal. 

“We are aligned. We are aligned in the firm belief that Iran must never be allowed to acquire or possess a nuclear weapon,” he said, noting that “We happen to believe that diplomacy... centered around a potential mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA is the most effective means by which... to once again see to it that Iran is subject to permanent and verifiable limits on its nuclear program as well as to the most stringent verification and monitoring regime ever negotiated.”

Price reiterated that if Tehran and Washington can return to compliance with the JCPOA, Iran will not be in a position to acquire a nuclear weapon, adding that US and Israel “see eye to eye on this overarching priority of ensuring that Iran can never acquire a nuclear weapon.”

Conservative Foreign Policy Expert Jalal Khoshchehreh said in an interview on Thursday that hardline conservatives in Iran are preparing to blame whatever falls short of their demsands on Iran's previous government if the new deal is different from what President Hassan Rouhani's government had achieved in its negotiations with the West between April and June 2021.

Khoshchehreh explained hardline, or in his word, radical conservatives are pretty much sure that a deal is being made with the United States. On Wednesday, lawmakers at the Iranian parliament said that they had been briefed by top security, nuclear and foreign policy officials who told them that major hurdles on the way of an agreement have been removed and the United is weighing Iran's final response.

The analyst cautioned however that radical conservatives are getting ahead of themselves and setting the stage for the post-agreement developments, a situation in which both Tehran and Washington have made compromises.

Meanwhile, the former head of the Iranian parliament's Foreign Policy and National Security Committee Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh described the differences among various Iranian conservatives over a new deal as a sham fight.

Referring to tough positions taken by some hardliner conservatives such as the editor of hardline daily Kayhan, Hossein Shariatmadari, who said on Thursday there no US guarantee is trustworthy, or conservative politician Mansour Haghighatpour, who has spoken about disciplining the United States, Falahatpisheh said that "Obstructionism has already started against a new deal. Had an agreement been reached earlier, it would have been working by now. Nonetheless, everyone in Iran and America should welcome any move toward reducing tensions no matter when this move starts."

He said that "Iran's response indicates Tehran's acceptance of [EU’s Josep] Borrell's proposal. Tehran only needs to make sure that Washington's promises about [lifting] the sanctions are spelled out in the text of the agreement."

In another development, former Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabiei said in a commentary published by reformist daily Etemad that "It is wrong to believe signing an agreement will improve everything in Iran. This is a trap we should not fall in. An agreement simply removes the barrier on the way of moving ahead. But going forward needs prudent policymaking and efficiency." 

He acknowledged that everybody in Iran seems to be happy about reaching an agreement as they think the country's has moved in the right direction. Rabiei added that as a result, the former opponents and supporters of a deal have reached a common understanding. But still, they will have two different approaches in the post-agreement situation. One group will limit the outcome to selling more oil and getting more money to survive and improve the current situation. However, the right approach is using the agreement as a first step to end Iran’s isolation from the world economy and to reconstruct and expand the country's infrastructure by investing in development.

The former official then opined that "the confrontation between these two approaches is the first challenge Iran will face in the post-agreement situation. Meanwhile, officials should prepare the country's banking system for the new reality…pave the way for foreign investment and strengthen the private sector."