Unwritten Agreement, New Mode Of Iran-US Deal, Says Politician

Speaking during his weekly press conference on Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said: “We confirm no such thing as negotiations for an interim agreement or new arrangements to replace the nuclear deal.”

Despite the fact that Tehran’s extraneous demands collapsed the Vienna talks, Kanaani claimed that “Iran’s government has never left the negotiation table and has shown its readiness to conduct serious and substantive negotiations in order to reach a conclusion” on reviving the nuclear deal, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

His remarks came only a day after Iran’s ruler Ali Khamenei said reaching a deal would be acceptable if the country’s nuclear infrastructure remains intact. Echoing Khamenei’s remarks, Kanaani reiterated that Iran will continue to rely primarily on trying to neutralize sanctions as it does not trust the West, and at the same time, pursue negotiations to have them removed altogether.

Former US President Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear pact in 2018, and imposed tighter sanctions on Iran’s energy exports but Tehran has since ramped up nuclear enrichment.

After much speculation, Kanaani also confirmed reports about talks between Iran and the US through Oman in the past few weeks, claiming the Muscat talks were not secret, but an opportunity to defend Iran's national interests.

“We welcomed the mediation proposal put forward by senior Omani officials several weeks ago, and exchanged messages with the opposite side [US], with the aim of activating the ‘sanctions removal’ talks,” he said, using the Islamic Republic’s jargon for Vienna talks.

His claim was also repeated by Mohammad Marandi, a de facto spokesman for the regime who said in an interview with Qatar-based TV channel Al Araby that there have been no secret negotiations between Tehran and Washington.

Offering an insight into details of the secret discussions, Marandi, a US citizen close to Tehran's leadership, indicated there are more than nuclear issues on the table. “There is no direct negotiation between Iran and the United States but indirect negotiations are held by sending messages via third parties, and all of the messages are related to the issue of prisoners and assets that the United States has seized," he said.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman also revealed in his presser on Monday that Tehran and Washington are close to a prisoner-swap agreement.

He said that although the Islamic Republic is engaging with the US through intermediaries about prisoner swaps, the two could be “very close” to an agreement. “We hope to see the exchange of prisoners because we made all the necessary efforts,” he added. 

On Friday, Axios revealed details of the talks between American and Iranian officials in Muscat last month with Omani mediators shuttling between their separate rooms to deliver messages.

According to the Axios report, the “proximity talks,” which have not been previously reported, represent the first known indirect engagement between Tehran and Washington in this way in several months. White House Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk and Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri-Kani were among the officials who traveled to Oman secretly for talks.

The report came after the London-based news outlet Middle East Eye claimed Iran and the United States “are nearing a temporary deal that would swap some sanctions relief for reducing Iranian uranium enrichment activities.”

In May, Iranian Deputy Trade Minister Alireza Peyman-Pak made the announcement that VTB would be the first Russian bank with a direct presence in Iran, but this was quashed by Andrei Kostin, the bank's CEO.

“We are not going to open a bank in Iran. We opened a representative office, and two people work there," he said, speaking to Reuters.

The CEO explained that the office is simply a contact point where requests can be submitted, claiming that VTB does not plan to "majorly change" the geography of its presence.

After Russia's war against Ukraine, VTB was one of the Russian banks that was completely sanctioned by the United States and the European Union and banned from operating in European countries.

The bank has subsequently been forced to close its branches in Europe and Africa and has only branches now, in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Vietnam.

According to Iranian regulations, representative offices of foreign banks only play the role of liaison between the bank and Iranian organizations and companies.

Raisi is expected to visit Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua - all sanctioned by the United States.

“The common position of Iran and the three countries is to stand against the domination system and confront unilateralism,” claimed Raisi before his trip.

The tour will begin with Raisi's visit to Venezuela, which is a close ally of Tehran receiving oil and other assistance. This is his 13th foreign trip since taking office.

Last year, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro visited Tehran and signed a 20-year cooperation plan to take bilateral relations to a new level.

Along with his chief of staff and deputy for political affairs, the president is accompanied by his ministers of foreign affairs, petroleum, defense, and health.

“In addition to friendly political ties with Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, Iran has also had good cooperation with these countries in the field of energy, industry, agriculture, science and technology, and medicine and treatment,” added Raisi.

Last month, a Cuban delegation visited Tehran and signed 13 agreements that included cooperation in biotechnology, healthcare, trade, banking, agriculture, and sports.

The three countries are key political allies for Iran. The United States has accused Iran of circumventing sanctions by exporting crude to countries including Venezuela, while also helping the oil-rich Latin American country to rebuild its energy infrastructure.

Khamenei who was addressing a group of Iranian nuclear scientists and officials in Tehran also claimed that Iran will not opt for nuclear weapons simply because of Islamic principles, “otherwise, they could not have prevented us.”

Tehran’s nuclear program, which has almost reached the threshold of weaponization, is quite controversial among Iranians, with many blaming the resulting sanctions for ruining the economy and impoverishing tens of millions of people.

Apparently, cognizant of the is fact, Khamenei said, “If you want a powerful Iran, all those who love Iran and the Islamic Republic, everyone who loves the nation and aspires for the power of this country, should regard this nuclear scientific, research and industrial effort as important.”

His use of nationalist slogans was clearly meant to garner some support among the population, with what is seen as a small minority of loyalists supporting the regime.

Iran’s nuclear program once again became a highly controversial international issue when former US President withdrew from the 2015 JCPOA accord, demanding a tougher agreement and a change of behavior by Iran that was fomenting trouble across the Middle East.

President Joe Biden quickly signaled his intention to return to the JCPOA, but Iran that had reacted relatively cautiously to Trump’s move, began to up the ante in December 2020, by passing a law to increase uranium enrichment first to 20 and then to 60-percent purity by early 2021.

Western officials and experts say that there is no justifiable civilian use for 60-percent enriched uranium. The only likely purpose is to purify uranium to 90 percent needed for assembling a bomb.

Negotiations that began in April of that year to revive the JCPOA came to an impasse in 2022, and Iran continued to accumulate enriched uranium. American officials believe that Tehran would be able to weaponize in just a few months if it decides to go nuclear.

In the light of recent reports about secret talks to reach some sort of a limited deal, whereby Iran would cap its uranium enrichment, Khamenei said, “It is possible that they [the West] would want to reach an agreement in some areas, but the nuclear infrastructure should not be affected.”

Iran has deployed thousands of advanced enrichment machines known as centrifuges in the past two years that can turn out enough 90-percent purified fissile material for a bomb in just two weeks. Even an agreement to freeze enrichment now, would leave Iran in the advantageous position of remaining at the nuclear threshold. 

Any limited agreement, which the US has denied, would most likely leave these centrifuges in place.

Despite Washington’s denials there are signs of some steps signaling attempts to somewhat reduce the extent of disagreement.

Reports on Saturday indicated that the Biden administration has allowed Iraq to make available $2.7 billion of Iranian funds blocked in Iraqi banks due to US sanctions. This is so far the largest tranche of money Washington has allowed to be released, although it has been suspicious of Iranian machinations in Iraq to launder money.

Khamenei also reiterated his long-held position that the West and UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) cannot be trusted. 

Any negotiation or nuclear agreement should receive Khamenei’s approval, since he has the final say in all important political, military and economic issues, as the Supreme Leader.

The hacktivist group produced documents in May showing that it breached 120 servers of the presidential office, getting access to internal communications, meetings minutes, President Ebrahim Raisi’s online conference platforms and about 1,300 computers inside the offices.

The MEK-affiliated Telegram account Uprising till Overthrow has been releasing the documents on its social media accounts. The latest report shows that 190 hectares of government-controlled land in the southern city of Khorramshahr on the Persian Gulf was given freely to the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI).

The head of the Atomic Energy Organization claimed in a letter to First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber that in order to "accelerate the process of exploration and extraction of uranium ore throughout Iran", the government laws should be changed in this regard.

In one of the documents, the security chief of Fordow nuclear plant -- an Iranian underground uranium enrichment facility located 20 miles (32 km) northeast of the Iranian city of Qom – had asked for about 150 hectares of public land to be given to the nuclear facility to increase its security buffer zone as work continued to expand Iran's nuclear capabilities.

Earlier in May, the group Uprising till Overthrow also hacked into the Islamic Republic’s foreign ministry servers, disabling 210 sites and online services and leaking another large batch of documents.

In the new cyberattack, the group is said to have gained access to “tens of thousands confidential documents” but has so far released some of them. The number of the published documents is still so large that analyzing them will take weeks.

The hacker group also published a document that contains information about the request of the Atomic Energy Organization to import 35 vehicles with an engine capacity of more than 2,500 cc.

Hassan Rouhani, President Raisi's predecessor, had banned the import of Completely Built Units (CBUs) in July 2018, allowing only Completely Knocked-Down (CKDs), which are imported in parts rather than assembled.

Any official organization needs to receive foreign currency from the government and permission to import vehicles or machinery, but cars are particularly tightly regulated, because of the cost for the government in hard currencies.

The difficulty with obtaining US dollars or euros for imports became acute after former US President Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal and imposed tough sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, the main source of its revenues.

With French automakers withdrawing from the Iranian market after the imposition of the US sanctions, CKD imports of a variety of Chinese vehicles have flooded the market since then.

The group also claimed that their access to the internal systems of the president’s office was so vast that they sent e-mails to the office’s recipients address list with photos of the leaders of MEK and photos of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Raisi with red crosses over them as well as slogans of “Death to Khamenei” and “Hail to Rajavi”, the current leader of the opposition group.

The president’s office immediately reacted, denying that “the official website of the president” was down due to any attack.

Among the released documents, there is correspondence between the president’s office and the office of the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) under besmirched chief Ali Shamkhani, confirming rumors that the regime's top security chief was forced out after the President said he had failed to do enough to quash riots, despite killing over 500 civilians and arresting more than 20,000.