Hopes And Warnings In Iran As Nuclear Deal Comes Within Reach

In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Pahlavi noted that the regime of Iran is the main responsible party for the attack on writer Salman Rushdie in New York last week, adding that Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini invoked God to “call on all valiant Muslims wherever they may be in the world to kill [Mr. Rushdie] without delay.”

“While the Islamist regime in my country and the assailant it appears to have inspired bear responsibility for this attack, they were enabled by Western policy makers,” he wrote.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the United Kingdom and Germany cut relations with Iran, sending a strong message, Pahlavi said.

“This forced the Islamic Republic to keep a low profile. British and German citizens were largely safe from its machinations. The strong response from the West didn’t change Tehran’s destructive desires, but it did contain them,” he said, highlighting that now it appears “Western powers on both sides of the Atlantic have forgotten the lessons that kept their citizens secure as well as the dissidents to whom they offered a haven.”

He said although the Islamic Republic has not changed its revolutionary principle, it is now “accepted at glitzy panels at international forums and attend headline-grabbing negotiations at Europe’s chicest hotels.” That acceptance has afforded the regime unprecedented and undeserved moral equivalency with the West and has fostered confidence among Tehran’s radical followers who see the regime as a source of revolutionary inspiration to radical action, Pahlavi said. 

The negotiations with Washington over a new nuclear deal in Vienna have shown “Khamenei and his criminal cabal” that they can effectively get away with murder, he said.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking Republic, Sen. Jim Risch tweeted on Thursday that the “The Iranian regime seeks JCPOA guarantees from the Biden Administration that it will end the IAEA probe, protect Western companies operating in Iran, and allow Iran to accelerate nuclear weapons work if a future administration exits the deal.”

The key phrase here is “The Iranian regime seeks,” which is different from a claim that the Biden Administration has agreed to make the concessions. But the National Security Council was quick to respond to the tweet within the hour.

“Nothing here is true. We would never accept such terms. We also would not have left a deal that was working only to see Iran massively accelerate its nuclear program.”

Before Senator Risch’s tweet however, information emerged from Iran that regime hardliners were circulating a list of what they called “US concessions”, including lifting of some non-nuclear sanctions, which the Biden Administration has insisted it would not do.

The claim by hardliners in Tehran, however, was different from Sen. Risch’s points and the National Security Council tweet did not specifically address these.

One crucial point mentioned in Tehran was allegedly the lifting of sanctions imposed, for non-nuclear reasons, on a large conglomerate controlled by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Iran International asked the State Department about the Iranian claims, but the press office referred our reporter Samira Gharaei to the National Security Council tweet, which in fact had only addressed Sen. Risch’s claims.

It would be normal perhaps for the State Department not to respond to unofficial claims by politicians who do not formally represent a government.

The government-controlled media in Iran also chose not to report the claims by the hardliners.

Negotiations to restore the 2015 nuclear deal, JCPOA, have reached a crucial stage where Iran is awaiting the US response to a text it sent to the European Union on August 15. EU sources said Thursday that the US response may come “at any moment”, perhaps on Friday.

The only significant news on the nuclear talks in the Iranian press on Friday was a report on remarks by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (Qalibaf) at a ceremony Thursday evening.

The Speaker accused the US of bullying Iran and said, “If we don’t stand up to that country, they will not back down. Therefore, we should become more powerful.”

Referring to a law passed by parliament in December 2020 that mandated more uranium enrichment and reduction in monitoring access for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Ghalibaf said “nothing happened” when Iran disconnected the IAEA cameras in its nuclear installations… [on the contrary] “America again returned to the negotiating table.”

While Jerusalem believes Iran is close to inking an agreement with world powers, and has started preparing for the announcement of the deal, top Israeli officials said on Thursday that the time has come for Western powers to walk away from talks. 

“The Europeans sent Iran a final offer, which doesn’t even meet the demands that the Americans committed to, and established that this offer was ‘take it or leave it,'” said a senior Israeli official at the highest level of decision-making on Thursday, adding that “Iran turned down the offer, and the time has come to get up and walk away.”

“Anything else sends a strong message of weakness,” the official added.

The unnamed senior official, in a briefing to Israeli journalists, also said that the world must now discuss what must be done in order to prevent Iran from abtaining a nuclear weapon.

Earlier on Thursday, Prime Minister Yair Lapid expressed this message in his phone call with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. He also made the case to US Ambassador Tom Nides, and Florida congressman Ted Deutch, the chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East, North Africa and Global Counterterrorism.

Israel’s National Security Adviser Eyal Hulata will head to Washington, DC, next week to conduct a series of meetings with US officials on the Iran nuclear program.

According to this information, the implementation of a nuclear agreement will take 120 days during which a series of steps will be taken by both sides, including the release of Iranians imprisoned in the United States for violating US sanctions and other acts for the benefit of Iran’s government, and US citizens held hostage in Iran.

Iranian hardliners who are circulating the information call it a list of “concessions” by the United States, but this claim cannot be verified.

They include the immediate release of $7 billion frozen in two South Korean banks and annulment of three executive orders signed by former President Donald Trump after he withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the JCPOA.

Also, Iran will be allowed to sell 50 million barrels of oil in the 120-day period, presumably with the necessary arrangements for receiving the proceeds through legal banking channels.

Currently, Iran ships its oil primarily to China in clandestine ways and it is not clear how much cash it receives and how much of the trade is based on barter.

The legal sale of 50 million barrels at current crude oil prices would generate another $4 billion for Iran in the first 120 days. The oil in question is most probably what Iran has stockpiled, trying to find customers. There were reports in the past that Tehran might have stored up to 100 million barrels both on land and on tankers.

Also, the information circulating says that sanctions imposed on 17 banks will be removed, which would most probably include the Central Bank of Iran. All other sanctioned Iranian banks are either directly owned by the government or are quasi-state banks, some probably also affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC).

Sanctions will be removed from 150 institutions or entities, again all affiliated with the state or with centers of power such as “charitable” organizations linked to the office of the Supreme Leader and possibly the IRGC. However, not having the list of these entities it is hard to be certain.

One name mentioned is a huge business conglomerate, presented as a charity, directly run by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s office. The entity is called The Execution of Imam Khomeini's Order (EIKO), which is known in Persian simply as Setad.

The Biden Administration has been claiming that it will not lift non-nuclear sanctions, such as those imposed for links to terrorism, Iran’s missile program or human rights violations. EIKO was sanctioned on January 13, 2021, days before President trump left office, under the Executive Order (E.O.) 13876, which was imposed for Iran’s regional destabilizing activities and its missile program.

Finally, the information received by Iran International indicates that an exemption will be granted to companies engaging with Iran in case the US withdraws from the agreement and re-imposes sanctions. The duration of this exemption is not mentioned, but it was reported this week that it could be as long as one year.

US Republicans and other critics of reviving the JCPOA under these conditions say that if Democrats lose control of the US Congress, they will derail President Joe Biden’s concessions to Iran.

Stressing that Iran cannot be allowed to endlessly buy time in Vienna, Lapid expressed Israel’s firm opposition to a return to the deal, adding that it was crucial for the E3 — Germany, France, and the UK — to send a clear message that they would make no further concessions to Iran during the talks.

Earlier in the day, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian held a phone call with his Omani counterpart Sayyid Badr al Busaidi, in which he repeated that if Iran’s red lines are respected, a new phase will start in Vienna.

“We will enter a new stage in Vienna Talks once we receive the US response to Iran’s position [submitted to EU mediators on Monday]، if we're assured that we'll reap economic benefits of the JCPOA and our red lines are met," he said. 

Referring to Oman’s constructive role during the negotiations, Amir-Abdollahian thanked Doha's efforts to bring the views of different parties attending the negotiations closer.

According to IRNA, Oman's foreign minister also expressed hope that with the cooperation of all sides in Vienna, a satisfactory outcome will be reached.