Busy Day In Washington As Iran Nuclear Talks Take Center Stage
Focus in the Iran nuclear talks is in Washington today as special envoy Rob Malley briefs Congresspeople, and critics request disclosure of all talks details.
Focus in the Iran nuclear talks is in Washington today as special envoy Rob Malley briefs Congresspeople, and critics request disclosure of all talks details.
Eighteen months after efforts began between Iran and six world powers to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, negotiations are on hold after Iran and the United States exchanged messages following a European Union text circulated August 8 suggesting ways forward.
In a statement to the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency Tuesday, the US said that while it was ready “to quickly implement…mutual return to full implementation” of the 2015 agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), “what we lack is a willing partner in Iran.”
Tehran, which began exceeding the deal’s nuclear limits the year after the US left it in 2018, has attributed the pause in talks to the US being unwilling to accept Iranian ‘red lines’ – including ‘guarantees’ designed to cushion Iran against another US withdrawal – as well as to domestic political US politics.
Some analysts have argued that President Joe Biden does not want Iran to become an issue in November 8 Congressional elections, where the Democrats hope to retain control of the Senate. Critics of the JCPOA, who are disproportionately though not exclusively Republicans, tend to see any airing of Biden’s approach to Iran as a possible vote-winner.
Ned Price, the State Department spokesman, said in his press briefing Tuesday the administration was “not going to detail…publicly” its recent feedback on the August 8 EU text. Price did say Iran had in its latest input taken a “step backwards in many ways.” But he added: “This is a negotiation. There are going to be back-and-forths. Some gaps have closed in recent weeks, but others clearly remain.”
Motion for Congress to see deal proposals
With US officials, including Malley, due to brief members of the House of Representatives today, the House Foreign Affairs Committee at 1pm is due to discuss a motion from Virginia Foxx, a Republican. Raised in July, the motion requests the president “transmit certain documents to the House of Representatives relating to any initiative or negotiations regarding Iran’s nuclear program.” Under current legislation, it is believed the administration would submit to Congress any text over reviving the JCPOA only once agreement was reached.
In his press briefing Tuesday Price denied reports, arising from briefings given by an Israeli official accompanying Prime Minister Yair Lapid in Germany, that Malley had been sidelined. “There is nothing to those reports,” Price said. “I can tell you Rob is deeply engaged day-to-day on the substance of this. He is leading a team here at the department.”
Opponents of the JCPOA, although they mostly backed President Trump leaving the agreement and imposing ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions through presidential actions, have accused the Biden administration of trying to sideline Congress. Defending the administration’s record, Price spoke Tuesday of State Department officials, “including Rob,” being “up on the Hill [Capitol Hill, Congress] a number of times briefing relevant committees on our efforts to achieve a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA.”
Ulyanov: No new resolution at IAEA board
One aspect of the nuclear talks concerning JCPOA critics have been reports, denied by US officials, that the administration has been ready to soften its demand that Iran fully satisfy the IAEA over uranium traces found in sites not declared as nuclear-related. While the US, alongside three European states, moved a motion censuring Tehran at the IAEA board in June, no further action was expected at this week’s quarterly board meeting.
Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s ambassador to the IAEA, tweeted Wednesday that discussion of Iran at the board had passed with “no resolution or decision…Just exchange of views.”
In the past few weeks Mohammad Marandi, who acts as de facto spokesman for Iran's nuclear negotiating team, has been trying to link energy needs in Europe to ongoing talks for reviving the 2015 agreement, known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
“Winter is Coming”, Marandi had tweeted August 21. His tweet depicted a photo of European leaders and the US President Joe Biden with the headline “Biden Discusses Iran nuclear talks with leaders of UK, France, and Germany”.
In an interview with Al Jazeera news channel on September 4, he said Iran “wants” a deal but Europeans “need” it. “Winter is approaching, and the EU is facing a crippling energy crisis,” he told Al Jazeera.
Prominent reformist journalist and politician, Abbas Abdi, has dubbed the policy of delaying an agreement in expectation of desperation in Europe as “Winter Mirage”.
In a commentary in Etemad newspaper Saturday, Abdi warned President Ebrahim Raisi not to be deceived by those who are against restoration of the JCPOA and claim that delaying an agreement until winter will secure a better deal for Iran. “But they know well that this is only and illusion and a lie,” he wrote.
Abdi argued that the premise is completely wrong because Iran cannot supply natural gas to Europe even if they face a serious energy crisis. Due to lack of pipelines and LNG facilities Iran simply cannot export gas to Europe. Moreover, “In winters there is shortage of gas in Iran and they cut its supply to industries and even have difficulty in honoring their gas export commitments,” he said.
A report earlier this month based on official statistics revealed that Iranian industry lost $7 billion last year due to shortages of gas and electricity. To avoid public discontent, the government decided to deprive industries such as petrochemicals and steel of electricity in peak summer months and gas in the winter to supply homes, as the former administration had done.
Some pundits believe that the idea of delaying talks until winter originates from the political circle of former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.
Journalist and political analyst Hadi Mousavi said Tuesday that Jalili and his associates recommend such strategies without any knowledge of the technical side of things at higher levels of the state. “Decisions are made on the basis of such plans because they are trusted.”
Iran holds the world’s second largest natural gas reserves, but sanctions have deprived the industry from foreign investment and technology to maintain and increase output.
Kayhan newspaper, which is known as the voice of the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, has also insisted in many editorials and commentaries in the past month that Iran is in no rush to restore the JCPOA and urged President Raisi to suspend the nuclear talks for two months and wait for a winter energy crisis in Europe.
Abdi responded to Kayhan in a tweet on August 27, while Iran Diplomacy news and analysis website in an article titled “A Threat That Won’t Work” on September 5 said the freezing European winter script will only work for Moscow, not Tehran, and delaying talks will not help getting concessions from Washington and its European allies.
The Times of Israel Monday quoted a “senior Israeli official” travelling with Prime Minister Yair Lapid in Berlin proclaiming the death of talks to revive the 2015 deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). The official said the Israeli delegation had given “information to the Europeans that proved the Iranians are lying while the talks are still happening.”
The official called on Washington to “put a credible military threat, and everyone to push for a better agreement.” He or she said that discussions were “no longer in Malley’s hands,” with the US special envoy Robert Malley shunted aside. A State Department subsequently denied that Malley had eased out or that the US position had “toughened,” the Times of Israel reported.
Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State reiterated Monday that it was not possible to give a timeline for the JCPOA talks. US officials, including Malley as well as Blinken most recently in Brussels last Thursday, have said they will continue efforts to revive the 2015 agreement as long as this suits US national interests and has non-proliferation benefits.
In an editorial Tuesday, Bloomberg, whose criticisms of the JCPOA go back to its being signed in 2015, argued that the US should act as though the deal were dead even though “most observers now expect talks to languish at least until after the November midterm elections.”
Bloomberg argued it was time for the US to switch “to so-called Plan B,” which the paper said “might help persuade Iran to back off its most unreasonable demands — and will put the US in a better position to deal with the consequences if it doesn’t.”
Plan B – ‘closing loopholes’
Bloomberg explained its notion of ‘plan B’ as “closing sanctions loopholes that have allowed Iran to continue to sell millions of barrels of oil, primarily to China.” This would apparently involve using executive orders signed by President Donald Trump after he withdrew the US from the JCPOA in 2018 to impose penalties on Chinese entities importing Iranian crude or in other trade with Tehran.
‘Plan B’ would also involve, Bloomberg said, accelerating efforts to “link the air defense networks of Israel and friendly Gulf nations,” and “speeding delivery [to Israel] of key systems such as refueling tankers for long-range air strikes,” presumably for bombing Iranian nuclear or other targets.
“It's no surprise that Iran is using this time to strengthen its capabilities for the future,” Bloomberg concluded. “The US and its partners should do the same.”
Mohammad Marandi, a spokesman for Iranian nuclear negotiators, advised viewers of Al-Jazeera television Sunday not to lightly dismiss prospects of JCPOA revival. Tehran and Washington were, he said, still “very close” to agreement.
Had the US accepted Iran’s August 15 response to a European text circulated August 8 in an effort to conclude 18-month talks, “we would have had a deal by now,” Marandi said. Against EU and US claims Iran subsequently hardened its stance, Marandi argued it had rather tried to close “loopholes” over sanctions remaining in the text and reminded viewers European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell had called the August 15 Iranian response “reasonable.” Lapid at the time called it “a bad agreement.”
The Iranian spokesman claimed on-going enquiries made by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) into Iran’s pre-2003 nuclear work — when, he said, Iran “purchased a couple of old models of Pakistani centrifuges to use them to develop their own” — could easily be resolved if the matter were not “politicized” by members of the IAEA governing board, which currently meets in Vienna.
‘Internal issues that team Biden faces’
“This delay is due to internal issues that team Biden faces,” Marandi said. “They’re afraid that if they sign on this document before the [November 8 mid-term Congressional] election, they’ll come under criticism from Trump and…allies in the Israeli regime…The problem is that the Americans don’t want this discussed in Congress right now.”
Hillary Mann Leverett, a former state department official, told Jazeera the US position had been shaped by Biden advisers calculating by early August that “the Democrats had a better chance of keeping at least the Senate in the upcoming November 8 elections,” making the administration “even more hesitant” over JCPOA revival for fear of “opening up a wide prospect of criticism from 2024 presidential candidate Trump and other Republicans.”
Mann Leverett also highlighted domestic politics in Israel, where with November 1 parliamentary elections looming Lapid is trumpeting his approach to Iran as more effective than that of rival Benjamin Netanyahu. She warned that both Washington and Israel lacked any real sense of urgency over the Tehran’s expanding nuclear program given years of predictions that Iran was on the verge of developing atomic weapons.