October 08, 2021
by Warren L. Nelson
Iran’s Foreign Ministry says it will return to the JCPOA revival talks “soon” but it has been saying that for weeks and refuses to be any more definitive, conveying to many observers that it hasn’t decided yet how it will operate in the talks or what end game it will seek.
The United States and the European members of the negotiating team Britain, France and Germany are growing more and more impatient as they see Iran’s nuclear program expand and develop, which is exactly what the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was designed to stop.
The United States continues to say every few days that “time is running out” for Iran to return to the negotiating table but the Americans are no more willing to fix a deadline for Iran’s return than Tehran is.
Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic has continued to play games that infuriate the Europeans and Americans. For example, the Foreign Ministry in early October said the Americans should issue a “goodwill gesture” to induce Iran to return to the talks, such as unfreezing $10 billion in Iranian funds. A few days before that, the Foreign Ministry called on Washington to lift all the sanctions imposed or re-imposed by the Trump Administration before the talks resume. The Americans, to no one’s surprise, just rolled their eyes.
Germany actually went further, publicly denouncing Tehran’s call for assets to be unfrozen. “Iran cannot set any further conditions for resuming the talks,” a German Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
Tehran has also made noises about the EU guaranteeing that foreign investors will return to Iran with the JCPOA’s revival and about the US guaranteeing that Washington will not renege on the agreement yet again. But there is no way either of those can be guaranteed.
One thing and only one thing has clearly been decided by the Raisi Administration: the talks with the other powers will be handled by the Foreign Ministry, it was announced October 3. There had been a debate on turning the talks over to the Supreme National Security Council, which had handled the talks before President Hassan Rohani took office.
JCPOA negotiators met in six sessions from April to June. But no talks have been held since Iran’s June 18 presidential elections.
Most analysts writing in the public media have concluded Tehran’s stalling is an effort to extract concessions from Washington such as the unfreezing of some funds or the lifting of some sanctions. But it is quite possible the delay is simply because President Raisi can’t decide how to proceed in the negotiations.
Reuters news agency quoted one unnamed Iranian official as telling it, “Iran will return to the talks in Vienna. But we are in no rush to do so, because time is on our side. Our nuclear program advances further every day.”
Ali Vaez, the senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, said, “More time equals more leverage, given the exponential growth of Iran’s nuclear program.”
And Meir Javedanfar, a lecturer at Israel’s Reichman University, said, “Ayatollah Khamenehi seems to believe that by waiting he can get a better deal from Washington, that time is on his side.”
There are many hardliners, however, telling Khamenehi and Raisi not to return to the talks but simply to push ahead with Iran’s nuclear program. Yet those who follow Iran’s economic conditions seem almost uniformly to be saying the JCPOA (and the consequent lifting of sanctions) must be revived or the economy will continue to deteriorate. Many of those people are also saying the Islamic Republic must also accept the banking standards of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) or no international bank that matters will do business with Iran even if sanctions are lifted. Raisi has not said a word about the FATF standards.
Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic continues to play hardball with the inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), much to the fury of the Europeans. The IAEA said that in a September 12 agreement with the IAEA Iran granted the IAEA full access to the buildings at the site in Karaj that makes components for centrifuges. But the IAEA said when its inspectors arrived at the site September 26, they were denied access to the main building where the components are made. Iran said the September 12 agreement didn’t cover that building, a statement that was not credible given that the whole point of the IAEA initiative was to gain access to buildings with IAEA cameras so that new memory cards could be installed. Iran called the IAEA complaint “spiteful.”
The unanswered question is what will come out of any JCPOA talks if they are resumed. Both Iran and the US have said they are prepared to return to the text of the 2015 JCPOA. But Washington points out that Iranian nuclear work over the last 2-1/2 years has taken its nuclear program beyond many limits in the JCPOA and says Iran must do something what is not made clear to make up for that. Both the Europeans and Americans also want to extend the end point for the JCPOA restrictions on Iran the main restrictions expire in 2030 but Iran has flatly refused to agree to any extension.