Iran Insists On 'Guarantees', Shelving IAEA Probe For Nuclear Deal

At the start of Sunday’s cabinet meeting, Lapid said Israel will continue to pressure the US but not to the point that it will cause a crisis in relations. “The correct policy is the one that we have been leading in the past year: To continue the pressure, without causing a rupture, to present credible intelligence, to be part of the process without destroying the special relationship with the US.”

Lapid said to “those who say that we are not shouty enough or blunt enough” should recall that, in 2015, when then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu “insisted on an unnecessary confrontation [with the US], it was an utter failure. The Americans simply stopped listening to us.

“The reservations we presented to the US were taken into account. We also spoke to other partners and presented demands [they should make of] Iranians. We can’t say everything, but not everything should be subject to fights and speeches,” he added. 

President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid last week that the United States will never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. Israel opposes a return to the 2015 deal, which would lift sanctions on Iran and would limit its nuclear program for a few years.

Lapid made the remarks one day before the Mossad chief is set to depart for Washington to attend closed door classified meetings of House and Senate intelligence committees about the Iranian threat and the dangers of a nuclear deal. 

Marandi published a series of tweets from his interview with Al Jazeera news channel on Saturday, saying, “Iran will be patient. The US under Obama systematically violated the deal and under Trump/Biden it imposed maximum pressure against innocent citizens... Winter is approaching and the EU is facing a crippling energy crisis.”

Emphasizing that “Iran won't accept ambiguities or loopholes in the text,” he said, “There should be no loopholes that can be used to undermine a deal. There are problems with a few words and the US can easily fix them.”

“The US domestic situation is a key reason why a nuclear deal has been allusive (elusive). While some EU governments have already asked Iran about oil as well as natural gas exports, Biden is fearful that foes will depict him and certain allies as weak,” he added.

Tehran is trying to sell the agreement as beneficial to Europe's energy crunch, regardless of the fact that even with no sanctions or restrictions on Iran’s exports, the country is unable to provide European countries with natural gas. 

Iranian media repeatedly talks about ‘Europe’s freezing winter” while it has almost nothing to do with Tehran’s crude oil exports, except generally helping to bring down oil prices. Europe’s need to replace Russian gas is a specific issue on its own that Iran cannot help with due to its own shortages. A nuclear agreement now cannot impact Iran’s ability to export natural gas for the foreseeable future mainly due to Iran’s huge domestic need.

Fars news website affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard Sunday published an interview with Hossein Shariatmadari, chief editor of the hardliner Kayhan Daily, blasting the nuclear negotiations as a Western ploy and recommending to quit the NPT.

Kayhan is published under the supervision of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s office and Shariatmadari is his representative at the flagship paper.

The ultra-conservative ideologue said that 20 years of talks prove that “the other side is not worried about Iran producing nuclear weapons, rather it uses the issue as an excuse to keep sanctions” as the only remaining lever for the United States “to confront Islamic Iran,” and it will never give then up.

He went on to argue that consequently, it is meaningless to negotiate, and diplomacy “will lead nowhere”. As an example, Shariatmadari said that the United States openly and clearly says it cannot provide guarantees about its commitments to an agreement. “What kind of an agreement is it when the other side is not willing to provide guarantees about acting according to its commitments?”

At the same time, Ali Khezrian, a member of parliament from the hardliner Paydari Front, in a note published by media, quoted specific clauses of what he claimed to be the new draft nuclear deal, arguing that it is a weak agreement for Iran.

He argued that nuclear activities should not be reduced before US sanctions are lifted and Iran is able to verify that it can conduct business without being impeded by US economic restrictions.

He cited the draft agreement to say that the new deal does not meet this Iranian demand, inscribed in a parliament law passed in December 2020. Khezrian specifically referred to the third appendix of the draft agreement arguing that the US will remove oil sanctions after Iran begins reducing its key nuclear activities, without a chance to verify the US step.

The lawmaker also complained that Washington has not provided any guarantees in the new agreement to remain in the deal and not to use the UN Security Council ‘trigger mechanism’, or to impose new sanctions. On the contrary, Khezrian claimed that in section 5 of the draft, it is Iran that first has to execute its commitments before the US carries out its own obligations.

In addition, international banks must verify who they would be dealing with in Iran to avoid interacting with sanctioned entities, which Khezrian said would lead to heavy fines for any bank violating this part of the agreement.

He also criticized the fact that US ‘foreign terrorist’ designation will remain in place against the Revolutionary Guard, IRGC, and this would impact other areas of business and trade.

Iran had been insisting on removing the IRGC from the US list of Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), but US President Joe Biden opposed such a move.

Iran’s argument was that since the IRGC runs large business conglomerates in the country, its continued FTO designation would have ripple effects in Iran’s economy and its ability to have trade and other economic ties with foreign entities.

Kayhan’s editor Shariatmadari in his interview summed up the position of many hardliners. “The ups and downs of negotiations in the past 20 years leave no doubt that if we do not pay ransom – which the current government would not – the talks will go nowhere…and we reach the conclusion that we have to withdraw from the NPT.”

Fereydoun Abbasi, a member of parliament’s energy committee, said Saturday that Iran should enrich uranium not just to 60 percent – the highest level reached at present – but to 90 percent and more. Uranium enriched to 90 percent is only used for producing nuclear bombs.

But what appeared to be a direct threat amid nuclear talks with the West was Abbasi’s statement that Iran should also produce plutonium.

“Western countries must be afraid of plutonium in Iran. We want plutonium for energy production, not weapons, and it must be available in the country,” he said, adding that “we must keep the enriched materials.” Abbasi went on to say that Iran must do these things publicly and under the supervision of the agency.

Indirect talks between the United States and Iran since April 2021 to revive the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has reached a critical stage, as Iran has hardened its position in recent days and insists on its remaining demands.

Tehran is asking for US guarantees both for the durability of a new agreement and on issues related to sanctions. In addition, Tehran also is demanding an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) probe into its past undeclared activities to be closed.

Production of plutonium by Iran was banned outright under the JCPOA in 2015. According to the accord, a plutonium heavy water reactor that Tehran was building in Arak was dismantled and its core filled with concrete. Plutonium produced from uranium reactor spent fuel is the easiest path to making nuclear bombs.

Abbasi had earlier said that the highly enriched uranium fissile material should be used “both for scientific research and for making nuclear fuel for submarines.”

On September 1, another lawmaker and a commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Mohammad Esmail Kowsari said, "We can turn the 60% enrichment rate into 93%, which means an atomic bomb, and although we are not looking for this, we have the ability to do it if the other side is slow to move" to revive the landmark nuclear accord.

On July 17, Kamal Kharrazi, a senior adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said Iran has the technical capability to build a nuclear bomb.

Iran began in 2019 enriching uranium beyond the 3.67 percent cap set by the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), the year after the US left the 2015 deal and imposed ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions. There are no civilian uses for 90-percent-enriched uranium including research and medical isotopes which would need up to 20-percent enriched uranium. Iran also has no nuclear submarines and 90 percent is widely considered weapons grade fissile material.

In its nuclear brinksmanship since early 2021, Iran has also severely restricted monitoring by the IAEA by first denying real-time access and then disconnecting cameras and special equipment. In this period, it is believed Tehran has accumulated enough enriched uranium to easily take a leap to 90-percent enriched fissile material enough for one or two nuclear bombs.

Speaking in Kashan in honor of “nuclear martyrs” – presumably assassinated Iranian scientists – Mohammad Eslami extolled the benefits of nuclear technology in power generation, agriculture and medical treatment. “The enemy has tried to prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining advanced technology,” he said.

Eslami has been among leading officials, including President Ebrahim Raisi, insisting the International Atomic Energy Agency must end its enquiries into uranium traces found in Iran as a condition for Tehran returning its nuclear program to the limits of the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). Tehran began exceeding JCPOA limits 2019, after the United States left the JCPOA in 2018.

Eslami’s latest remarks come as analysts detect signs of Tehran hardening its stance in on-going nuclear talks, despite both and the US reacting positively to an August 15 Iranian response to a European Union draft text circulated August 8 aiming to bridge US-Iran difference.

An official from one of the European JCPOA signatories – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom; the ‘E3’ – told journalist Laura Rozen Friday that Iran’s latest input on the EU draft text, which Tehran sent Thursday, had “moved us very far back – at a time when, thanks to the EU co-ordinator’s perseverance, and everyone’s flexibility, we were almost there.”

The official’s outlook was bleak. “It’s very difficult to know whether this is fixable,” he said. “In any case, Iran has given a clear signal it is not interested in a deal now.”

US spokesman Vendant Patel said late Thursday that Iran’s input was “not constructive,” a statement Iran deemed ‘hasty.’ Adriene Watson, spokesperson for the National Security Council, moderated the US response later, describing negotiations as a “regular back and forth” in which “some gaps have closed in recent weeks but others remain.”

EU ‘at outer limits of flexibility’

The European official speaking to Rosen highlighted Iran’s approach to the IAEA probe where he said the August 8 EU text was “at the outer limits of our flexibility already – and which they implicitly accepted in their August 15 response.” The Wall Street Journal’s Laurence Norman also reported Thursday he had been told by several sources Iran had added the closure of the IAEA probe “back into its formal concerns.”

In an interview with al-Jazeera television late Friday, relayed Saturday by the official news agency IRNA, Mohammad Marandi, who acts as a spokesman for the Iranian negotiating team, stressed the importance of tightening the language in any accord reviving the JCPOA.

Marandi said that “ambiguities or gaps” could be misused by the US to follow the example of President Donald Trump in withdrawing from the JCPOA. He also stressed the importance of resolving, before the 2015 deal was revived, “fake and politicized accusations made by the IAEA against Iran in the Board of Governors.”

‘Necessary political will’

The US and E3 have insisted Iran must satisfy the agency over the uranium traces, regardless of the JCPOA under its commitment as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This 35-member IAEA board passed a resolution raised by the US and E3 censuring Iran.

Iran, by contrast, has argued there is a 2015 precedent in the IAEA closing its enquiries into Tehran’s pre-2003 work, only to revive them after allegations made by Israel in 2018. In his Jazeera interview, Marandi highlighted June’s visit of IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi to Israel shortly before the board voted as evidence that “their [the IAEA’s] stance towards Iran has been politicized.”

Despite remaining challenges in the talks, some see agreement looming. Citing Israel’s Channel 12, Iran International Saturday reported an Israeli foreign ministry report expecting this “within weeks.” Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s ambassador to the IAEA, tweeted Friday that the “Iranian suggestions aren’t over-ambitious and can be accommodated provided there is the necessary political will.”