EU Top Diplomat Says Iran Obstructing Nuclear Deal Talks With New Demand

In the final stages of negotiations to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear agreement, Tehran has been demanding that the US remove the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) from its Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list. The Biden Administration has not decided yet, but most Senate Republicans and some Democratic lawmakers have opposed such a move.

Sen. Coons said that although he does not have full information on the matter, “it would have to be something very significant” to warrant IRGC’s delisting.

Regarding the Islamic Republic in general, Coons said it is doing at least three bad things: Consistently and at large scale repressing the human rights of the Iranian people; exporting violence in the region through support for Hezbollah, for Houthis, through the IRGC and other groups…and continuing to develop ballistic missile technology that threatens the whole region.

Sen. Coons, who is a close supporter of President Joe Biden and is not opposed to his policy of reviving the JCPOA, said that besides nuclear enrichment, in three other areas Tehran’s “behavior has got worse, not better over the last couple of years.”

He maintained that these issues should be addressed in future negotiations, because focusing just on the nuclear issue “would be a miss.”

“A successful deal should address a whole spectrum of what they do, all of them. That does not seem to be on the agenda of what Iran is willing to discuss,” the Senator added.

The issue of removing Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) from the US list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO), which Iran now expressly says is a pre-condition to agreeing to the restoration of the 2015 nuclear deal, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) appears to be at the center of Arab foreign ministers in Tel Aviv.

The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, who is also participating in a two-day summit attended by foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Morocco, and Bahrain, tried to reassure Israeli and Arab partners of the United States on Sunday that Iran will not be allowed to build a nuclear bomb whether the JCPOA is restored or not.

The extraordinary summit of the Arab countries that have normalized their relations with Israel in the past eighteen months is hosted by Israel’s prime minister, Naftali Bennett.

“But whether there’s a deal or not, our commitment to the core principle of Iran never acquiring a nuclear weapon is unwavering. And one way or another, we will continue to coordinate closely with our Israeli partners on the way forward,” Blinken said at a joint press conference with Israel’s foreign minister, Yair Lapid. “We are both committed, both determined, that Iran will never acquire a nuclear weapon,” he said.

The US has also sought to reassure Israel and Arab countries that it would not surrender to Iran's demand over delisting of the IRGC whose involvement in regional politics and conflicts – including Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria.

Us allies in the region have long been concerned over the Biden Administration policy of restoring the JCPOA in exchange for lifting crippling sanction the former US administration imposed on Iran.

“This is not a deal that is intended to resolve that issue. Many in the region view the IRGC in the same way we view them. I can tell you that the IRGC will remain sanctioned under US law, and our perceptions, our views, our policy towards the IRGC have not changed,” the US Special Representative for Iran, Robert Malley, said at the Doha Forum Saturday.

But in a meeting with the Lebanese Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, on the side-lines of the Doha Forum on Monday, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's advisor and former foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi insisted that the IRGC is its national army and the country's national army could not be listed as a terrorist group. “The real thing is that IRGC is very important for Iran, and they are not going to compromise on that,” he said.

Seattle-based professor and political commentator Jalil Roshandel told Iran International Monday that in his view, the US has decided to restore the JCPOA but is still not sure about Iran's demand to delist the IRGC. It appears that under the immense pressure of Congress and US allies in the Middle East, the Biden administration is now more inclined to reject the demand, he said.

Roshandel said concerns over Iran's activities in the region may incite the participants in the summit in Israel to strike a security deal. "All of this is pressure on Biden [to reject Iran's demand] … And Iran has not shown any signs to assure the West that the IRGC will not behave as before in regional conflicts and be more friendly even if it is delisted."

"We are near an agreement," Le Drian said at a news conference in Doha.

France is one the original signatories of the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran known as JCPOA, along with the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia and China. The United States withdrew from the agreement in 2018.

Le Drian's comments came in contrast to a bleaker assessment of the Iran nuclear situation offered by the United States on Sunday.

On Sunday, US Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley said he was not confident that a nuclear deal between world powers and the Islamic Republic was imminent, dampening expectations after 11 months of talks in Vienna that have stalled.

One of the last major issues remaining in the negotiations is Iran’s demand from the United States to lift terrorism sanctions imposed on the Revolutionary Guard by former president Donald Trump’s administrations. The Biden Administration is apparently trying to find a compromise on the issue, a move that has met with strong criticism domestically and by its allies in the region.

With reporting by Reuters

"The nuclear issue is a matter between Iran and the United States", said Brigadier General Hossein Alaei, the former chairman of the IRGC joint staff (1997-2000) and commander of Iranian navy (1985-1990), in an interview with Eco Iran internet TV channel Sunday.

He insisted that Iran must completely remove Russia and other "middlemen" – the European troika consisting of France, Germany, and Britain -- from the talks to restore the 2015 nuclear deal, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

"Now, it's Russians who are responsible at least for the interruption of the talks, it's Russians who don't want issues between Iran and the US to be resolved," he said, arguing that Russia finds the resolution of hostilities between the two countries against its own interests in the same way that the United States does not want Iran to be close to Russia.

Russia tried earlier this month to extract some concessions from the US over Ukraine sanctions amid the Iran talks.

Negotiations in Vienna which started in April 2021 were paused earlier this month despite all sides suggesting that the process had reached its “final stages” and expressing optimism that a deal could be struck soon.

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"Why should the Russians come and go between Iran and the US in the JCPOA talks? Do we trust them more than we trust ourselves? Why don't we [directly] talk with the Americans?" Alaei accused Russia of betraying Iran "throughout history.”

Lack of direct contact between Iranian and American negotiators has complicated the talks as the two sides only communicate through the EU's deputy foreign policy chief and coordinator in talks, Enrique Mora and exchanging "non-papers".

Mora arrived in Tehran Saturday evening, apparently to resolve the current impasse, where both Iran and the US say the other side is responsible for a decision to make a deal possible. He met with the Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and top negotiator Ali Bagheri-Kani Sunday and is expected to head to Washington to convey Iran's message and to discuss the situation with US officials.

"The lack of [the ability to make] a political decision on the part of the United States to remove the sanctions that are tied to economic interests of the Iranian people is the [only] existing obstacle hindering achievement of a final outcome [in the talks]," Amir-Abdollahian said in his meeting with Mora. "Political decision" supposedly refers to a decision to remove Iran's Revolutionary Guard from the US list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Bagheri-Kani told Mora that the US needs to act "realistically" to make a deal possible.

The EU has not yet made any comments about the outcome of Mora's talks with Iranian officials.

In a televised interview Saturday Amir-Abdollahian also hinted that Iran was not happy with Russia's recent attempts to take advantage of the nuclear talks.

Amir-Abdollahian said China and Russia "stand by a [possible] agreement" but added, without any elaboration, that he had told the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that Iran would not "wait for any of the sides [in the Vienna talks if they delay an agreement]."

Earlier this month, Alaei called the Russian President Vladimir Putin "a dictator" and his attack on Ukraine a “disgrace". Iran's top officials including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi have subtly expressed support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine blaming the United States for the crisis.

Reiterating Tehran’s determination to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, Bagheri-Kani said, “An agreement can be reached if the American side is realistic”.

Mora, the senior EU official chairing the Vienna talks, also briefed the Iranian negotiator about his latest consultations with the other parties in the Vienna talks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. He i

Later Mora also met Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, but so far there are no details.

Mora tweeted Friday that he would travel to Tehran to work “on closing the remaining gaps…Much is at stake”.

The most important remaining issue seems to be removing Iran’s Revolutionary Guards from the US list of terrorist organizations.

More than two weeks after Iran’s nuclear talks in Vienna came to a halt, Tehran sounds more optimistic about the eventual outcome than the Biden Administration.

US Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley attending a conference in Doha said that he is not confident a nuclear deal between Western powers and Iran is imminent, adding that Washington will not remove the IRGC from its terror list.

Iran insists that Washington should remove the foreign terrorist organization (FTO) designation on its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) but in the US bipartisan opposition is growing against the Vienna talks, especially any notion of removing the IRGC from the blacklist.