Differences On Iran Flare At UN Security Council

In the video clip, posted to social media Tuesday, shows Biden apparently at a campaign walk-about during November’s Congressional elections. Asked about the 2015 agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), the president clearly replies: “It is dead, but we’re not going to announce it.”

This is for “a lot of reasons,” Biden says. Replying to an apparently Iranian woman asking him about “mullahs,” he says he is aware the Iranian government “don’t represent you,” but he adds that if they acquire atomic weapons they will represent a nuclear Iran .

Formal diplomatic efforts to revive the JCPOA, from which President Donald Trump withdrew the US in 2018, have been suspended since late summer. US officials have said JCPOA revival is no longer their “focus,” and Iran envoy Rob Malley in a recent Foreign Policy magazine interview recognized “a series of vicious cycles” in which US sanctions triggered Iran to expand its nuclear program.

But, contrary to what Biden says in the video, US officials have continued to say they want to restore the agreement as the best way to cut off any Iranian path to a nuclear weapon.

Europe: ‘Continue engagement to revive deal’

A week after Josep Borrell said “we have to continue engaging as much as possible in trying to revive this deal,” the European Union foreign policy chief met Tuesday in Jordan with Iran’s Foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani. The meeting was at a conference sponsored by France and Iraq aimed at reducing regional tensions. “Necessary meeting…amidst deteriorating Iran-EU relations,” Borrell tweeted.

The European signatories of the JCPOA – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom – criticized the US leaving the 2015 agreement and imposing ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions. But the Biden administration has improved relations with Europe, including by in 2021 joining talks to revive the JCPOA. Contrary to China and Russia, the Europeans have blamed Tehran for failure to bridge US-Iran gaps, as Washington continues sanctions and Tehran seeks ‘guarantees’ to cushion its economy and nuclear program against another US withdrawal. A statement from France, Germany, and the UK issued Monday said Iran had made “unacceptable demands.”

The Ukraine crisis, and media coverage of unrest in Iran, have also pushed Europe closer to the US as both send billions of weapons to the Kyiv government. France, Germany, and the UK have joined Washington in arguing Iran sending drones to Russia contravenes a JCPOA clause barring the transfer of certain weapons to and from Iran.

While Western policy remains to prevent Iran from deciding to ‘go nuclear’ they also realize that at this juncture they cannot enter talks over the JCPOA.

Borrell mentioned two pre-conditions after meeting with the Iranian foreign minister: Tehran should immediately halt military support for Russia and internal repression, conditions the Islamic Republic can hardly meet in foreseeable future.

This video, which was published on Twitter for the first time by Damon Maghsoudi, a software engineer living in the United States, was recorded on the sidelines of the November 4th election campaign in California.

In this video, an Iranian-American woman asks Biden to declare the West's nuclear agreement with Iran, known as the JCPOA, is “dead”.

In response, the US President clearly confirmed that the JCPOA is “dead”, but he he said he cannot announce it for “a lot of reasons”.

The Iranian woman than tells Biden, “We just don’t want any deals with the mullahs, they don't represent us,” and he replies, “I know they don't represent you, but they will have a nuclear weapon that they will represent.”

Although Biden does not give a direct answer about the “reasons” why Washington refuses to officially announce this, but concerns about Iran’s progress towards obtaining a nuclear weapon could be the main reason for leaving the door open with the Islamic Republic.

However, analysts have been saying for weeks that the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the West have reached an impasse.

Massimo Aparo, IAEA deputy director general, led a delegation billed by Iran as addressing “outstanding issues,” widely taken to refer to an impasse over uranium traces found by the agency in Iran in sites not declared as nuclear-related. The IAEA said Sunday it planned no public statement, and the Iranian news agency ISNA merely reported meetings – which included Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran – had addressed “future joint cooperation and programs, in addition to safeguarding issues.”

The IAEA has been seeking clarity over the uranium traces, found last year in sites linked to Iran’s nuclear work before 2003. The agency argues Tehran should provide satisfactory answers as part of its ‘safeguards’ obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

But the IAEA probe has become entangled with efforts to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). Tehran has said the IAEA should drop is enquiry which it says began only after Israel in 2018 made a raft of allegations during efforts to back United States President Donald Trump in withdrawing the US from the JCPOA and imposing draconian sanctions on Iran.

The 35-member IAEA board in June and November passed US-drafted motions condemning Iran over not satisfying the agency. Opposing the move, China and Russia said it would stymie talks to restore the JCPOA.

Speaking at the third Tehran Dialogue Forum, Kharrazi who is the head of a foreign policy outfit at Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s office, referred to Iran’s “high-level” nuclear capabilities, but maintained that “we do not intend to produce an atomic bomb, because we do not regard it as a component of our security.”

Iran’s English-language media did not mention Kharrazi’s comments about the ability to build nuclear weapons, but semi-official Persian media covered it as headlines.

Kharrazi said that during his tenure as foreign minister (1997-2005) the European powers did not agree for Iran to have a few uranium enrichment centrifuges, but now Iran has a vast infrastructure to produce fissile material.

“With Iran’s resistance and the efforts of Iranian scientists, we now have 19,000 centrifuges working [to enrich uranium],” the former foreign minister said.

Kharrazi reiterated previous Iranian claims that the country’s ruler Khamenei is against the production of nuclear weapons because it will not bring security. He argued that if Iran becomes a nuclear weapons power, others in the region will start an “arms race and trying to produce nuclear weapons.”

While denying the intention to produce atomic bombs, Kharrazi said, “We are of course aware of the issue that having the nuclear technology in itself is a deterrent.”

Kharrazi then insisted that Iran is ready to return to its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA, if the West also honors its commitments. “Related to recent negotiations, the issue of inspections and claims by the agency [IAEA] remain,” he said and expressed hope that these can be resolved.

Iran began violating the terms of the JCPOA after the United States pulled out of the agreement in 2018 and imposed economic sanctions. It now enriches uranium up to the 60-percent level, which is short step away from the 90-percent enrichment it would need to produce nuclear weapons.

Iran’s economic situation is fast deteriorating, with its currency losing 50 percent of its value in the past 15 months, and especially since protests began in September.

Negotiations to revive the JCPOA also reached an impasse in late August, and this is a negative factor impacting the economy, as lack of an agreement leads to general pessimism in the country.

The harsh and deadly suppression of protests in the past three months has led to another complication in the nuclear talks, as Western governments have become less willing to renew a deal that would provide tens of billions of dollars to a regime which has killed nearly 500 people and jailed around 20,000.

Their reasons reflect the danger of alternative approaches, the unpredictable consequences of a military strike on Iran, and the belief that there is still time to alter Tehran's course: even if it is inching toward making fissile material it is not there yet, nor has it mastered the technology to build a bomb, according to officials.

"I think that we do not have a better option than the JCPOA to ensure that Iran does not develop nuclear weapons," Josep Borrell, the European Union's foreign policy chief, said last week in Brussels after a meeting of EU officials. Under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action under which Tehran reined in its nuclear program in return for relief from economic sanctions.

"We have to continue engaging as much as possible in trying to revive this deal."

The uphill climb to revive the pact has grown steeper this year. Iran has brutally cracked down on popular protests, Iranian drones have allegedly made their way to aid Russia's war in Ukraine and Tehran has accelerated its nuclear program, all of which raise the political price to giving Iran sanctions relief.

"Every day you see more and more pundits saying this is the worst time for reviving the deal and we should just be putting pressure on the wretched regime there," said Robert Einhorn, a nonproliferation expert at the Brookings Institution think tank.

"There is a kind of resignation, even among the strong proponents of revival. Their hearts would be for paying the political price for a revival, but their heads tell them it would be really tough," he added.

90% ENRICHMENT A RED LINE?

In 2018 former US President Donald Trump reneged on the 2015 deal that, in a key provision, limited Tehran's enrichment of uranium to a purity of 3.67%, far below the 90% considered bomb grade.

Trump reimposed U.S. sanctions on Iran, leading Tehran to resume previously banned nuclear work and reviving U.S., European and Israeli fears that Iran may seek an atomic bomb. Iran denies any such ambition.

Iran is now enriching uranium to 60%, including at Fordow, a site buried under a mountain, making it harder to destroy through bombardment.

Obtaining fissile material is considered the greatest obstacle to making a nuclear weapon but there are others, notably the technical challenge of designing a bomb.

A US intelligence estimate disclosed in late 2007 assessed with high confidence that Iran was working to develop nuclear weapons until the fall of 2003, when it halted the weapons work.

Diplomats said they believed Iran had not begun enriching to 90%, which they said they viewed as a red line.

"If Iran were to clearly restart its military program and enrich at 90% then the entire debate changes in the United States, Europe and Israel," said a Western diplomat, saying the diplomatic path would remain open unless that happened. US politicians have grown more hostile to cutting a deal because of Iran's ruthless crackdown on protests that began after a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, died in September in the custody of Iran's morality police.

U.S. President Joe Biden's administration has intensified sanctions against Iran in recent months, targeting Chinese entities facilitating sales of Iranian crude and penalizing Iranian officials for human rights abuses.

Still, even though negotiations are stalled Enrique Mora, the European diplomat who coordinates the nuclear talks, "keeps talking to all sides," said a senior Biden administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"We will continue with the pressure while keeping the door open for a return to diplomacy," US special envoy for Iran Robert Malley told reporters in Paris last month, adding that if Iran crossed "a new threshold in its nuclear program, obviously the response will be different." He did not elaborate.

Iran has linked a revival of the deal to the closure of investigations by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) into uranium traces at three sites. The United States and its allies have not agreed to that condition.

DIPLOMACY MAY LIVE EVEN IF JCPOA DIES

Several Western diplomats said they did not believe there was any imminent consideration of military action against Iran and suggested a strike could simply reinforce any Iranian desire to obtain nuclear weapons and risk Iranian retaliation.

"I do not think ... anybody is envisaging a military option in the near-term," said the Western diplomat. "The solution isn't going to be military and I don't hear a lot of people calling for one."

A third diplomat said he thought it practically impossible for Israel to bomb Iran without Western support.

Even if the 2015 nuclear deal cannot be resurrected, the senior Biden administration official said other diplomatic solutions might be possible.

"Whether, when and how the JCPOA can be revived is a difficult question," he said. "But even if, at some point, the JCPOA were to die, that would not mean that diplomacy would be buried at the same time."

Source Reuters - By Arshad Mohammed and John Irish