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Iran, West seem to be attending different talks

December 31, 2021

The international talks on reviving the JCPOA are continuing in Vienna with the Islamic Republic all bubbly about the great progress it says is being made while the three European powers and the United States say the talks are actually moving backward because the Raisi Administration has withdrawn all the concessions made earlier by the Rohani Administration.

Britain, France and Germany as well as the United States have all publicly warned that time is running out for Iran to bargain seriously.  US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in mid-December that the talks were “not going well” and Iran had only “weeks,” not months, to treat the negotiations seriously.

Iran came back to the table November 29 after a break of almost six months while the new Raisi Administration mulled what position to take in the talks.

Western negotiators were appalled when they saw the proposal.  They said the Islamic Republic tabled proposals that: a) rescinded every concession made in the April-June negotiations by the Rohani Administration; b) pocketed every concession the West had made; and c) made demands for more concessions by the West.

In other words, the Raisi Administration was trying to start the talks over from scratch except for pocketing whatever concessions the West had so far made.   The New York Times said the Iranian position amounted to eliminating up to 90 percent of what the negotiators had agreed to before the June presidential elections in Iran.

In December, Western negotiators said the Islamic Republic’s negotiators had backed off a bit by saying they were willing to discuss what they had proposed, although they did not embrace any of the concessions the Rohani Administration had made.

The Iran team told Iranian reporters that all was going very well because the West had accepted the two papers Iran had tabled, one dealing with sanctions removal and the other dealing with Iran returning to restrictions of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The chief of the Iranian delegation, Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri-Kani, tweeted December 17, “We have made good progress this week.”

The Western governments did not see it that way.

Negotiators from all three European powers told reporters December 14 that things were not going well and warned that the benefits of the 2015 nuclear deal will be lost in “weeks, not months.”

In a statement two weeks into the resumed talks, they said, “As of this moment, we still have not been able to get down to real negotiations.  We are losing precious time dealing with new Iranian positions inconsistent with the JCPOA or that go beyond it….  The JCPOA will very soon become an empty shell.”

Rob Malley, the US special envoy for Iran, told CNN  December 21, “At some point in the not-so-distant future, we will have to conclude that the JCPOA is no more, and we’d have to negotiate a wholly new different deal, and of course we’d go through a period of escalating crisis.”

Malley also said Iran is nearing the capability to develop a nuclear weapon in the near future.  “If they continue at their current pace, we have some weeks left but not much more than that, at which point, I think, the conclusion will be that there’s no deal to be revived,” he said.

His point was that the reason for the JCPOA was to restrain and restrict Iran’s nuclear program so the country would not get to the verge of creating a nuclear bomb but Iran had made such advances in the past two years that it is now about at the verge of being able to make a nuclear bomb.

“It seems very clear [Iran] is trying to build leverage by expanding their nuclear program and hoping to use that leverage to get a better deal,” Malley said.  “It won’t work.”

He said, “If they try to build more leverage, Number 1 they will not get a better deal because what we say we’re prepared to do is what was negotiated five years ago; secondly, their strategy is going to backfire, if that is their approach.”

At the White House, spokesperson Jan Psaki said December 9, “If diplomacy cannot get on track soon and if Iran’s nuclear program continues to accelerate, then we will have no choice but to take additional measures to further restrict Iran’s revenue-producing sectors.”  That telegraphed a focus on more sanctions and more enforcement of existing sanctions.

In Tehran, an economic daily, Jahan-e Sanat, discussed the negotiations with several Iranian experts in a series of debates that were primarily focused on the role of China in the nuclear talks. Observers generally said that China appeared to be silent during the latest negotiations. Experts told Jahan-e Sanat that China prefers that Iran and the West do not reach an agreement.

Jalal Sadatian, a former Iranian diplomat, told the daily that China is worried about any improvement in Iran’s ties with the West. He added that both China and Russia benefit from the sanctions on Iran. China particularly benefits from being the sole customer for Iran’s oil and getting it at a discounted price.

Another former diplomat, Fereidoun Majlesi, agreed with Sadatian and said, “Thanks to the sanctions, China has now monopolized trade with Iran and is using the situation to sell everything at a higher price while buying Iran’s oil at unbelievable discounts.”

Asked why Iran counts on China and Russia as its supporters in the nuclear negotiations, Majlesi said: “Iran feels committed to enmity with the United States and this brings it close to China from an ideological standpoint.” He further said that Iran is isolated in the international community but likes to say that there are countries such as China that are Iran’s allies.

Iran’s main focus in public statements made for the last several weeks has been on insisting that the United States first drop all its sanctions and then Iran would negotiate over its return to the JCPOA.  Iran has harped on that point in its domestic media.  But no one has taken that as anything but propaganda aimed at the Iranian audience.  The rest of the world has just ignored that talk.

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