As US Again Asks For Resumption Of Talks, Iran Demands 'Action'

Speaking in a Clubhouse session Wednesday evening, Zarif admitted he had wrongly told parliament July 21, 2015 that the word ‘lift’ rather than ‘suspend’ had been consistently used in the wording of the agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) in relation to sanctions.

"The mistake was mine when I said the word 'suspend' does not appear in the JCPOA,” said Zarif, who was deeply involved in two years of negotiations leading to the 2015 agreement, which was abandoned by United States president Donald Trump in 2018 as he introduced ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions on Iran. Zarif was himself sanctioned by the US in 2019.

Following the Clubhouse session, hardliner critics took to social media to call Zarif a traitor. A hashtag demanding his prosecutionhas been set up.

Calls for prosecution

"Zarif's ignorance of the text of the nuclear agreement must be thoroughly investigated and those responsible [for including the word 'suspend'] must be prosecuted," said lawmaker Zohreh Elahian, who sits on parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, Wednesday.

Hossein Kanani-Moghadam, another hardliner, slammed Zarif for his ignorance: "A nation put its trust in Zarif … to defend the country's interests. How could he agree on a text the content of which, particularly sensitive terminology, he was not aware of?"

"For forty years the Islamic Republic's diplomacy has been in the hands of this group that is dependent [on Western powers],” tweeted Abdolreza Davari, ex-adviser to former principlist president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “They have caused nothing but damage…Zarif's friends for forty years stood alongside the enemy".

In Wednesday’s Clubhouse session, Zarif explained to the audience that the negotiation team had been ordered to avoid certain terminology, presumably including the word ‘suspend,’ but had agreed to the word due to a technicality regarding the European Union's position.

According to Zarif, while negotiating the text of one of the JCPOA appendices, the European representative had said that the EU could not 'lift' all its sanctions before UN sanctions were removed and therefore the word 'suspend' was used in some places. Zarif added that the Iranian negotiator had had not informed him of this – and the word appeared in the agreement as signed July 14.

‘This is a lie’

"The matter of suspension had nothing to do with the United States, it was related to the EU sanction … that were supposed to be lifted later," Zarif said in his defense. "But they [his critics] used this, and said Zarif had not read the text of the JCPOA…This is a lie, the Western [negotiators] will definitely tell you if you ask them."

Journalist Amir-Reza Nazari tweeted in defense of Zarifthat the JCPOA text was later scrutinized by parliament, the Supreme National Security Council, and the watchdog Guardian Council. "Why didn't they notice?" he asked.

Mojtaba Davoudi, a reformist activist, asked in a tweet if the use of 'suspend' instead of 'lift' in the JCPOA appendix had caused any real harm.

Opponents of the JCPOA attacked Zarif just as much as President Hassan Rouhani over the agreement, especially when the US imposed stringent sanctions in 2018.

Zarif was in May reprimanded by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei after leaked audio revealed him criticizing the role of former Qods Force Commander Qasem Soleimani in Iranian diplomacy. Already a principlist hero for organizing resistance to the Islamic State group (Isis-Daesh) in Iraq, Soleimani was killed by a US drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020.

More pundits and economists warn that the country cannot continue in this manner a few more months, with some openly saying that talks with the United States are an urgent matter, while others implicitly convey the same message.

Ali Bigdeli, a respected professor of politics in Tehran told Fararu website on Wednesday that Iran should avoid making new demands in talks with the West over its nuclear program. He was commenting about remarks by Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian who on October 2 told the state television that while in New York last month he had refused to meet with US officials demanding that Washington unfreeze $10 billion of Iran’s assets.

Bigdeli said the important issue is a return to the talks in Vienna, which Iran hass suspended since June. He added that $10 billion is a small issue compared with the much larger gain awaiting Tehran if it reaches a deal with the West.

Since 2018, US banking and oil export sanctions have left Iran with very little income in foreign currency, forcing the government to print money which has led to almost 50 percent annual inflation, and impoverished millions of people.

Bigdeli said that the United States and Europe appear to be ready for a deal and overall, Iran also seems to have moderated its demands. Otherwise, he said, the West will not make any new concessions. Even in current circumstances, he said, any deal would be based on a step-by-step approach of reducing sanctions in return for Iran to giving up its uranium enrichment and returning to the requirements of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

A financial analyst, Maysam Radpur told Khabar Online website said Iran’s Central Bank is no longer able to control the national currency. The US dollar has hit 280,000 rials, rising 20 percent since May and unlike in the past when the central bank had foreign currency reserves to have an impact on the market, now it can no longer play a role. She added that the Iranian rial will further lose its value.

In answer to whether a nuclear deal would help strengthen the Iranian currency, Radpur expressed doubt. She argued that when the 2015 nuclear agreement was reached, the rial gained just 10-15 percent, while there were much higher hopes about the effects of the deal at that time than there is now.

The financial analyst said she believes that in case of an agreement over the nuclear issue Iran would increase its crude oil exports and the central bank would be able to stabilize the rial, however, there is no expectation in the local market that the currency could recoup its losses.

The rial has fallen from around 35,000 to the dollar in 2017 to 280,000 now.

“A nuclear agreement can postpone the impact of long-term economic pressures, and even if the rial gains, it would only be a 10-20 percent uptick,” Radpur said.

The South Korean news agency Yonhap issued a brief report on Robert Malley’s discussion with First Vice Foreign Minister Choi Jong-Kun but provided no details about how South Korea can help in the process of talks with Tehran.

Two South Korean banks hold $7 billion of Iran’s funds from the time when Seoul was purchasing oil from Tehran before full US sanctions on Iran’s crude exports were imposed in May 2019.

Iran has been hinting that the United States should release frozen Iranian funds before it returns to the talks. Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told Iranian state television on October 2 that he refused overtures to meet with US officials while he was attending the UN General Assembly in New York in September, asking that Washington should first unfreeze $10 billion.

It is not clear if Malley’s conversation with the South Korean diplomat was related to the issue of the frozen funds, or whether the US intends to release them to convince Iran to return to the Vienna negotiations. Malley asked for South Korea to play a “constructive” role in efforts to resume the negotiations.

However, Choi reiterated South Korea’s willingness to provide support necessary for the resumption of the nuclear talks "in consideration of the importance of Seoul-Tehran relations,” Yonhap quoted the foreign ministry as saying.

Iran left the Vienna multilateral nuclear talks aimed at restoring the 2015 nuclear deal, JCPOA, in June, saying its new president needed time to form a government, but has so far not set a date for its return.

The United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany that have been negotiating with Iran since April have warned that time is running out for fruitful talks as Iran continues to enrich uranium and advances its nuclear program that would make the revival of the agreement impossible.

Washington and its European allies have said they will make no new concession to Tehran until it returns to the talks based on what has so far been offered by the West.

Blinken said on Wednesday that he has spoken with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, on restoring Iran's nuclear deal with the world powers and that Moscow and Washington had a shared interest restarting talks as soon as possible.

"We had an opportunity to compare notes on where we stand and where we hope to go," Blinken said at a news conference.

Lavrov said that talks to restore the deal "should be resumed as soon as possible." But Lavrov stressed that the world wants the US to “return to the obligations of the nuclear deal” and in reference to US sanctions, stop the "illegal restrictions on Iran and all of its trading partners," he said.

"The United States and Russia, I think, (are) sharing an interest in seeing a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA … We had an opportunity to compare notes on where we stand, and where we hope to go," Blinken said at a press conference in Paris.

Biden senior aide Jake Sullivan also reaffirmed Biden's warning to Tehran that Washington could turn to other options if negotiations fail.

Sullivan hosted Israeli national security adviser Eyal Hulata for talks which, according to a US official, gave the two allies a chance to share intelligence and develop a "baseline assessment" of how far Tehran's nuclear program has advanced.

Under a 2015 deal, Iran curbed its uranium enrichment program, a possible pathway to nuclear arms, in return for the lifting of economic sanctions. Then-US President Donald Trump quit the deal in 2018 and the Israeli government opposes US efforts to revive it.

US experts believe the time it would take Iran to achieve nuclear "breakout" – enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb – has "gone from about 12 months down to a period of about a few months" since Trump pulled out of the pact, the US official said earlier, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Iran, Israel's regional arch-foe, has consistently denied it is developing a nuclear bomb.

Sullivan in Tuesday's talks "emphasized President Biden’s fundamental commitment to Israel’s security and to ensuring that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon," the White House said in a statement.

"Mr. Sullivan explained that this administration believes diplomacy is the best path to achieve that goal, while also noting that the president has made clear that if diplomacy fails, the United States is prepared to turn to other options," it added.

Sullivan's words echoed the message that Biden gave Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett during a White House meeting in August.

Tuesday's meeting of the US-Israel Strategic Consultative Group included military, intelligence and diplomatic officials and came amid stalled international diplomacy with Iran.

Western powers have been trying for weeks to get Tehran to commit to resume indirect negotiations with the United States in Vienna. The talks have been on hold since June, after hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi was elected Iran's president, and Tehran has been vague about when it might return to the table.

US officials have declined to specify what actions are under consideration if diplomacy with Iran collapses.

Asked whether that includes military options, the senior US official, who briefed reporters ahead of Tuesday's talks, said only that "we'll be prepared to take measures that are necessary."

Behind Tehran's stalling is an attempt to gain leverage to extract more concessions when negotiations do eventually resume, some officials and analysts have said, including by advancing its uranium enrichment program.

Bennett, a far-right politician who ended Benjamin Netanyahu's 12-year run as prime minister in June, has made clear he wants Biden to harden his stance against Iran, which Israel considers an existential threat.