Iran Media Cautious In Commenting On Nuclear Talks

In Washington, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that the US remained committed to securing Tehran’s “full compliance” with the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).

The Wall Street Journal is among US media uneasy over President Joe Biden’s handling of Iran. “For months the US has been all but begging Iran to return to the table, though the US won’t literally even be at the table in Vienna,” a Journal editorial noted Monday, “so American negotiators must work through European intermediaries. The US seems undeterred by this intentional humiliation.”

The Vienna talks Monday involved China, France, Germany, Iran, Russia, and the United Kingdom. Afterwards, Ali Bagheri Kani, Iran’s lead negotiator, claimed they had focused on lifting US sanctions, with a working group starting work immediately. He portrayed this as a significant victory for Iran.

“It is a major achievement that all parties in the meeting accepted Iran’s demand that first the situation of illegal and unjust US sanctions...should be cleared and then (we) discuss other issues,” Bagheri Kani told reporters.

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Enrique Mora, the European Union official chairing the talks, gave a welcome to proceedings, which began amid growing pessimism over prospects.

"I feel extremely positive about what I have seen today," Mora said, suggesting the Iranians had not rejected outright the results of the previous six rounds of talks held April-June under the previous Iranian administration of President Hassan Rouhani. "They have accepted that the work done over the first six rounds is a good basis to build our work ahead.”

The earlier talks had struggled to agree which US sanctions levied since previous US president Donald Trump left the JCPOA in 2018 were incompatible with the deal, as well as how exactly Iran would curb the nuclear program it has expanded since 2019, including by enriching uranium to 60 percent, far above the 3.67 percent allowed under the JCPOA.

“We will be of course incorporating the new political sensibilities of the new Iranian administration," Mora said.

Testing

This was the first round of talks since the Vienna process lapsed in June, as Iran suspended its participation after its presidential election. With many members of the new administration of President Ebrahim Raisi (Raeesi) known to be critics of the JCPOA, today was the first chance to test Tehran’s new negotiators.

Bagheri Kani had specifically said Iran required guarantees that the US will not again leave an agreement and impose fresh sanctions.

But while all remaining JCPOA signatories argue formally that both the US and Iran should return to the terms of the deal, there have been growing differences in approach between, on one side, the three European signatories (the E3) and, on the other, Russia and China.

Russia recently played down International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concerns over Iran, while Wang Qun, China’s IAEA envoy last week linked the Vienna talks to the Aukus atomic submarine deal between the US, UK and Australia.

Comments from US officials reflect that the EU-US relationship has warmed since Trump left office, and as European concerns grow over the expanding Iranian nuclear program and Tehran’s restriction on its cooperation with the IAEA.

Leverage

"If Iran thinks it can use this time to build more leverage and then come back and say they want something better, it simply won't work. We and our partners won't go for it," Rob Malley, the US special envoy for Iran, told the BBC Saturday.

Biden officials have stressed their consultation not just with the E3 but with Israel, which has opposed the JCPOA. Israel’s foreign minister Yair Lapid warned in London Monday that Iran would "play for time, earn billions from the removal of sanctions, continue to deceive the world and covertly advance the nuclear program."

Iran has been increasingly wary of the Europeans, especially in their criticizing Iran through IAEA country-level meetings. But Europe still hopes to bring all parties together and revive the JCPOA. French President Macron held a 90-minute phone call Monday afternoon with Raisi, the official Iranian news agency reported.

Enrique Mora, a deputy general-secretary in the European Union, told reporters he was positive after the first round with Iran’s new negotiation team led by deputy foreign minister Ali Bagheri Kani.

Mora said Iran was engaging seriously while sticking to a position emphasizing the importance of lifting United States sanctions.

Bagheri Kani told reporters he was optimistic, and that parties to the talks had agreed they should focus on lifting sanctions.

"The meeting of the Joint Commission on #JCPOA is over,” Mikhail Ulyanov, Russian ambassador to United Nations organizations in Vienna tweeted. “The participants agreed on further immediate steps during the seventh round of negotiations which started quite successfully.”

The Vienna talks are formally between remaining signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action): China, France, Germany, Iran, Russia, and the United Kingdom. The United States, which left the deal under previous president Donald Trump in 2018, takes part indirectly.

The talks have been in abeyance since June. Rounds between April and June failed to reach agreement on how to revive the JCPOA, both by removing US ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions introduced by Trump and by scaling back Iran’s expansion of its nuclear program beyond JCPOA limits since 2019.

While the remaining JCPOA signatories have all argued they expect both the US and Iran to return to the terms of the agreement, there has been a growing difference of emphasis between the European trio (the ‘E3’), who have moved closer to the Biden administration in expressing disquiet over Iran’s expanding nuclear program and restricted cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and Russia and China.

The will of the West

In editorial piece published in the Financial Times on the eve of the talks Bagheri Kani referred not just to the US but wrote that Iran waited to see whether “the west has the will to enter real negotiations.”

Russia recently played down concerns over Iran expressed by IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi. Moscow’s IAEA ambassador Mikhail Ulyanov said these were a “constant irritant” but had “little practical meaning in terms of proliferation risks” and the real challenge was restoring the JCPOA.

Wang Qun, China’s envoy at the International Atomic Energy Agency, last week linked the Vienna talks to the issue of Aukus atomic submarine deal between the US, UK and Australia.

“Why do the U.S. and U.K. say Iran can’t enrich uranium above 3.7 percent, while on the other hand they plan to transfer tons of highly enriched 90 percent material to Aukus?” Wang said Friday. “This is an example of a double standard.”

Under the JCPOA Iran is restricted in uranium enrichment to 3.67 percent, but is now enriching small quantities as high as 60 percent.

Iran International television reported that in a 4-page directive, the ministry of culture and Islamic guidance also reportedly ordered the press not to publish Persian translations of foreign media reports about the negotiations.

In the directive, the ministry said that it does not expect quick progress in the talks. Similar directives were issued to the press during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when hardliners were put in charge of nuclear negotiations.

Commenting on the red lines set by the culture ministry some social media users said, "A lot of foreign reporters and foreign news agencies also cover the negotiations. Will they also obey such directives?" Meanwhile, an Iranian reporter working abroad characterized the directive as Iranian officials' " childish understanding of the way media work."

Meanwhile, as several reports said that the Iranian delegation consisted of 40 members, Akram Sharifi an Iranian reporter well familiar with the Foreign Ministry pointed out in a tweet on Sunday that "Most of the team of 40 are translators and interpreters." She explained that most of the members of the Iranian nuclear negotiation team in Vienna do not speak English."

There were more debates on social media about the number of Iranian team members. Prominent hardline lawmaker Nezamoddin Mousavi quoted a member of the former negotiating teamas "Braging about having negotiated with a delegation of four individuals while the new negotiating team consists of 40 people!"

The lawmaker added, "I wish they went for negotiations with 400 rather than four people and instead, did not "bluff about lifting all the sanctions," and did not say later that they did not know that the JCPOA called for suspending rather than lifting the sanctions."

In comments under the post, one social media user said, "Calm down brother! The number is not important. What is important is the result," while another one suggested: "You go with 4,000 people and try to return with the same 'suspension' if you can."

In another development, while Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian was adamant that an agreement was "feasible and within reach," Foreign Policy Commentator Diako Hosseini wrote in a tweet that "When Iran's declared positions in the talks are about effectively lifting the sanctions and the United States declared objective is controlling Iran's nuclear program and preventing the development of nuclear weapons, threatening Iran with leaving the talks is neither an effective leverage, nor a deterring tactic" for Washington.

At the same time in another tweet Hosseini said: "Although the United States has other options in case the talks fail, Iran has no way other than reaching an agreement in order to accomplish its declared target."

In another reference to the size of the Iranian negotiating team, some Iranian reporters abroad said that even if they have booked 20 rooms at the Palais Cuborg hotel where the talks take place, that would cost Iran 20,000 euros per night. Iranian reporters working in Iran who were probably prompted by the Foreign Ministry to respond, quickly replied that the cost of accommodation for the Iranian team is far less as they stay at a cheaper hotel in Vienna.

In the meantime, one of the interesting comments about the "indirect talks" between Iran and the United States was made by former reformist lawmaker Mahmoud Sadeghi who wrote in a tweet that regardless of their claims, Iranian hardliners know that the United States is the world's leader, and they lack the self-confidence to sit face to face with it."

Naftali Bennett said in a video statement that was delivered to representatives of nations opening negotiations with Iran that Tehran seeks "to end sanctions in exchange for almost nothing" and keep its nuclear program intact while receiving hundreds of billion dollars once sanctions are lifted.

The video was obtained by the Associated Press.

Negotiators from Iran and world powers were meeting in Vienna on Monday to resume talks aimed at reviving a 2015 nuclear deal.

Iran has ramped up its uranium enrichment since the United States withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018.

Israel vocally opposed that agreement, and Israeli officials now say Tehran is closer than ever to developing nuclear arms, something it will not abide.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid is visiting London and Paris this week to discuss Iran with British and French officials, and Defense Minister Benny Gantz will head to Washington this week with the same aim.

Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. It has blamed the breakdown of the agreement on the Trump administration's decision to withdraw from it and restore crippling sanctions.

Report by AP

"Americans wasted our time in the [previous] six rounds of talks to preserve Trump's failed legacy," Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told reporters at his regular weekly press conference on Monday. He was referring to Trump's 'maximum pressure' sanctions adding that the "real sides", presumably the United States and its western allies, should make use of the open window of opportunity because it will not remain open forever.

"Talks will go in the right direction if the US comes to the scene to resolve the impasse [in the talks]," Khatibzadeh said while reiterating that that the US is responsible for both abandoning the 2015 agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and imposing sanctions on Iran.

Indirect negotiations with the US that Iran suspended in June resume Monday afternoon in Vienna after a five-month hiatus. Expectations of a breakthrough are low as Iran has considerably boosted its uranium enrichment during this time and claims to come to the talks with "full hands". Tehran has stockpiled 20-percent and 60-percent enriched uranium, mostly this year after the Biden Administration said it is ready to return to the JCPOA.

"We will be in a difficult place if the US is not coming to Vienna for resolving the impasses," he said and added that the US can get the "ticket for returning to the JCPOA room" only if it intends to lift its sanctions on Iran.

In the meantime, Tehran has hardened its negotiating position, demanding that all US sanctions imposed since 2018 to be removed “at once”. It is also demanding a guarantee from Washington that no future US government can pull out of agreements made with Iran. This poses a particularly difficult issue for the Biden Administration, which constitutionally cannot offer such a guarantee.

Iran's chief negotiator Ali Bagheri-Kani Sunday met with top Russian and Chinese negotiators as well as the deputy foreign policy chief of the EU, Enrique Mora.

"The makeup of the Islamic Republic's negotiating delegation reflects this resolve and seriousness for taking serious steps towards the removal of the US' sanctions against the Iranian people," Bagheri-Kani told reporters in Vienna Sunday. The team is mainly composed of financial rather than political officials as in the previous nuclear talks.

In his press conference Monday, Khatibzadeh alleged that some European parties "are seeking to prolong" the talks and criticized the publication of a joint article by the UK Foreign Minister Liz Truss and Israel’s foreign affairs minister Yair Lapid in The Daily Telegraph Sunday in which they said Britain and Israel will "work night and day" in preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

"When you see the UK foreign minister write a joint article with the party that from day one has made every effort to prevent the signing of the JCPOA, to destroy it, and is still the main opponent of talks in Vienna to revive it, when you see this arrangement, you realize that at least some European countries are not coming to Vienna with the will required for lifting of sanctions," Khatibzadeh said.

Khatibzadeh also repeated Iranian claims that talks with Rafael Grossi, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog, IAEA, last week in Tehran had been left incomplete "because we did not reach a definitive agreement on some words and concepts that were important to both" but said the agreed clauses were "almost finalized".

Grossi has reported back to the IAEA Board of Governors that his agency cannot fully monitor Iran’s nuclear activities because of Tehran’s lack of cooperation.

Iran reduced IAEA’s monitoring access earlier this year when it intensified its uranium enrichment, further complicating the Vienna talks.