Barring Dramatic Turn in Vienna Talks, Iran Nuclear Deal May Be Declared Dead

 Written by Alejo Vidal Quadras

Over the weekend, Iran’s lead representative at the nuclear negotiations in Vienna spoke to international media and declared that good progress had been made toward a resolution that would see the re-implementation of the 2015 agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Ali Bagheri-Kani’s remarks were predictably optimistic, but since the Vienna talks revived at the end of November following a five-month delay, that optimism has tended to reflect Iran’s insistence that its Western interlocutors are increasingly near to capitulating to Iran’s demands.

That position did not appear to have changed by Monday when those Western interlocutors unanimously contradicted Bagheri-Kani’s statements. The US, Britain, France and Germany, all seem to be maintaining their own brand of optimism, but only insofar as they are leaving open the door for serious progress at some point in the near future. The four Western powers evidently agree that the actual chances of such progress depend very much upon a change in Tehran’s posture at the talks, which hardened quite noticeably following the Iranian regime’s transition to a new hardline presidency beginning in June.

Following the first round of rekindled talks, Bagheri-Kani explicitly stated that any previously-established draft terms could be re-visited in the presence of new demands from the Iranian regime. It remains to be reported exactly what those new demands might consist of, but Western negotiators have stated that Tehran has introduced proposals which are inconsistent with the outcome of prior talks and with the JCPOA itself.

These inconsistences represent additional complications on top of the central difficulty of the Iranian regime’s demand for sanctions relief. Upon return to the talks in November, the Iranian dictatorship´s representatives made it clear that they would not only stand firm in their general demand but would expect the relief in question to be comprehensive, encompassing all sanctions that were re-imposed or newly imposed following the US withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018. These include not just those sanctions that were previously suspended under the terms of the agreement but also those that were later imposed for reasons unrelated to Iran’s nuclear activity.

Upon Iran’s insistence, no other topics had been addressed by the JCPOA – not even those, like the regime’s ballistic missile development, that are closely connected to the nuclear program. The US and the E3 honored this restriction over the objections of many policymakers within their own ranks. But now the Iranian regime appears committed to establishing a connection between issues that it had insisted should remain separate, by demanding that the US remove sanctions related to, among other things, the regime’s violent crackdown on opposition protests in November 2019.

Bagheri-Kani’s latest statements imply that the US is on the verge of succumbing to this demand, among others. But the US has sent quite the opposite message since even before the Vienna talks resumed. In the run-up to that resumption, US State Department officials held meetings in Washington with their British, French, and German counterparts to establish a consensus on the need for additional pressure on the Iranian regime should it continue obstructing the reconciliation process.

Each of the Western participants in the JCPOA is currently more willing to entertain the possibility of that failure than they ever were before. Early in 2020, when Iran announced that it would no longer abide by any of that deal’s terms, the E3 triggered a dispute resolution mechanism that could have resulted in the automatic re-imposition of United Nations sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program. However, soon afterward the leadership of the European Union signaled its willingness to draw out the resolution process indefinitely rather than acknowledge that diplomacy with Iran might fail.

On Monday, the E3 struck a different tone, making it clear in a joint statement that failure of the Vienna process is a real possibility, for which they will hold Iran singularly responsible. “Time is running out,” the statement said. “Without swift progress, in light of Iran’s fast-forwarding of its nuclear program, the JCPOA will very soon become an empty shell.”

The US backed up that statement on the same day, although State Department deputy spokesperson Jalina Porter emphasized the possibility of a last-minute turnaround by saying that it would take several days to assess whether Iran has adopted a more realistic posture in negotiations.

The fact is that the JCPOA has been an “empty shell” for a long time and the Iranian regime has been buying time to pursue its nuclear project. Now that the E3 finally join in declaring the JCPOA as an “empty shell,” it is time to trigger the long-overdue snapback mechanism and re-impose the United Nations sanctions on the Iranian regime’s nuclear program.

Dr. Alejo Vidal-Quadras

Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a Spanish professor of atomic and nuclear physics, was vice-president of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2014. He is currently president of the Brussels-based International Committee in Search of Justice (ISJ)

This article was first published by ncr-iran