Analysis: Iran nuclear deal rescue needs more time, envoys say ahead of
fresh talks
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[June 08, 2021]
By Parisa Hafezi and John Irish
DUBAI (Reuters) - A host of barriers to the
revival of Iran's nuclear deal remain firmly in place ahead of talks due
to resume this week between Tehran and world powers, suggesting a return
to compliance with the 2015 accord is still a way off, four diplomats,
two Iranian officials and two analysts say.
Iranian demands about sanctions relief and Western concern over Iran's
expanding nuclear know-how are among questions that may need weeks or
possibly months of further negotiations, the diplomats and analysts
said.
The talks seek to revive a landmark pact under which Iran agreed to
curbs on its nuclear programme in return for the lifting of
international sanctions, which opened the way for a brief thaw in
decades of U.S.-Iranian confrontation.
Then-President Donald Trump abandoned the deal in 2018 saying it was too
soft on Tehran, and reimposed sanctions. Iran responded by violating the
agreement's limits.
Trump's successor Joe Biden has said he wants to restore the deal's
nuclear limits and if possible extend them to cover issues such as
Iran's regional behaviour and missile programme. Iran wants all
sanctions lifted and no expansion of the terms.
European Union envoy Enrique Mora, the chief coordinator of the talks,
said last week he believed a deal would be reached at the upcoming sixth
round of negotiations in Vienna, expected to resume on Thursday or
Friday.
Adding to the impetus to make progress is an election in Iran on June 18
to replace President Hassan Rouhani, a pragmatist who promoted the
original deal. He is widely expected to be followed by a hardline
successor.
The election is not likely to change Tehran's negotiating stance:
regardless of who is president any deal must be approved by Iran's
hardline faction through Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. But neither
Washington nor Tehran wants to start from scratch, or entangle the deal
further in Iranian domestic politics.
Iran's top nuclear negotiator said last week that barriers to a revival
of the deal are complicated but not insurmountable. "Differences have
reached a point where everyone believes these differences are not
insolvable," Abbas Araqchi said.
However, none of the remaining sticking points lend themselves to rapid
solutions, according to the diplomats, Iranian officials and analysts of
Iranian nuclear matters.
Their assessment chimes with downbeat remarks on Monday by U.S.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who said Washington still did not
know whether Iran was ready to resume compliance with the deal.
"I doubt that the next round will be the final one... The parties are
still far apart on core issues," said Ali Vaez, senior Iran analyst at
the International Crisis Group.
And when, or if, disagreements are solved, more talks would be needed on
so-called sequencing - the delicate question of which side takes which
action and when, in return for reciprocal steps by the other side, the
diplomats said.
The negotiations have made considerable progress but are now at the
hardest part with the key decisions still needed, said a European
diplomat briefed on the talks, which began in April.
'THE HEART OF THE MATTER'
The talks have arrived at "the heart of the matter on the nuclear
dimension", a second European diplomat said.
A senior Western diplomat said that “of course” he hoped that the next
round would result in a deal, but injected a note of caution, saying
“until we are able to resolve the important issues that remain, we won’t
know.”
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A view of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility 250 km (155 miles)
south of the Iranian capital Tehran, March 30, 2005. REUTERS/Raheb
Homavandi//File Photo/File Photo
An Iranian official said: "Everything depends on
Washington. If the American side accepts to lift all sanctions, then
Iran will return into full compliance with the deal."
In addition to seeking the lifting of Trump-era sanctions, Tehran
also wants Washington to remove Iran's Revolutionary Guards from a
terrorism blacklist, which can be used to bar Iranian businesses
from the international financial system. It wants Europe to
guarantee foreign investors will return, and assurances that
Washington will not renege on the deal again.
But from the standpoint of Washington and its European allies, it
would no longer be sufficient to return to the nuclear restrictions
in the orginal deal, designed at the time to ensure that Iran could
not build a bomb in less than a year.
In the months that Iran has been breaching the limits, it has made
technical advances that make the original restrictions out of date.
Vaez noted that Iran has begun using advanced centrifuges, known as
the IR9, which are 50 times more powerful at producing enriched
uranium than the ones covered by the deal, known by its initials as
the JCPoA.
BREAKOUT TIME
"If Iran refuses to destroy these machines, its breakout time will
be shorter, unless it agrees to dismantle an equivalent number of
IR1 machines. That is seen by Iran as humiliating and beyond the
JCPoA's scope," Vaez said.
The Iranians have acquired knowledge and capabilities they did not
have before, said the European diplomat briefed on the talks, citing
Iran's first ever production of uranium metal, a material that can
be used to make the core of an atom bomb.
The development, reported this year by the International Atomic
Energy Agency, was not something covered by the 2015 deal, and any
revival of the pact would have to take account of this new-found
capability, Vaez said.
Bob Einhorn, a former senior State Department official and nuclear
negotiator with Iran, thought it highly unlikely that there would be
an agreement before the presidential election, but conceivable one
could be struck during the interim "lame duck" period before the new
president takes office.
Einhorn, now at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington,
said there could be some political advantage for the new Iranian
president to a deal being agreed during the interim.
A new president could criticize any concessions made by the current
Iranian administration of President Hassan Rouhani, then later take
credit for any economic boost the deal produced, he said. "So you
could see a kind of logic."
(Reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Dubai; Additional reporting by John
Irish in Paris, Arshad Mohammed in Washington and Francois Murphy in
Vienna; Writing by William Maclean; Editing by Peter Graff)
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