Raisi Defiant As Pundits In Iran Say He Should Make A Nuclear Deal

Foreign ministry’s new spokesperson Naser Kanani in his first weekly briefing with reporters said that chief negotiator Ali Bagheri-Kani is in touch with European Union’s coordinator of the talks Enrique Mora. He added that if the “other sides are committed to multi-lateral talks, Iran is also ready to follow that path.”

The latest round of unsuccessful negotiations took place in Doha, Qatar at the end of June. Bagheri-Kani held ‘proximity talks’ with his US counterpart Robert Malley through Mora, still refusing to meet the Americans in direct talks.

It was not clear if Kanani’s reference to “multi-lateral talks” meant that Tehran does not want negotiations just with the West and wants to bring back China and Russia to any future talks.

President Ebrahim Raisi, however, sounded defiant on Wednesday saying Iran will not retreat from its "rightful and logical" stance in talks to revive the 2015 nuclear pact, state media reported.

Almost one year of negotiations in Vienna ended at an impasse in Vienna in March. Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, the participants of the 2015 nuclear deal known as JCPOA were holding sessions with Iran. The United States was present on the sidelines, although it was the main protagonist in the complicated process of restoring the JCPOA.

Kanani repeated Iran’s demand of guarantees for its economic benefits if an agreement is reached. The US has agreed to left major economic sanctions, but Iran is insisting on all sanction imposed by the former US administration to be removed, including terrorism penalties imposed on companies, individuals and the Revolutionary Guard.

The foreign ministry spokesman also dismissed statements by President Joe Biden published last week in The Washington Post, that said the US will keep up economic and diplomatic pressure on Tehran until it is will to reach a nuclear agreement.

Biden also said that his administration has been able to deter attacks by forces aligned with Iran in the Middle East.

Kanani engaged in a long monologue, accusing the United States of bringing instability to the region and said that Biden had no right to accuse Iran or its allies of sowing discord in the region.

Kanani also responded to Israeli statements about having the right to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. He retorted that Israel has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treat (NPT) and has a large stockpile of nuclear weapons, so it has not right to accuse Iran’s “peaceful nuclear program” of having any military dimensions.

Iran began its nuclear program in 1990s secretly until its existence was revealed in 2002. Some aspects of that secret phase still remain unexplained and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors overwhelmingly censured Tehran in its June meeting.

Kanani repeated the Iranian threat of a “decisive response” to any Israeli action that would be “regretted by the Zionist regime.”

The publication of Rafsanjani's memoires started when he was still alive, and several volumes came out during the years before his suspicious death in 2017. All the volumes thatwere published after his death were examined by his son Mohsen before publication.

According to Chand Sanieh [A few seconds) website, which first published the new, unpublished parts are about Rafsanjani's angry reaction to unltraconservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "radical behavior". Rafsanjani believed this offered “a pretext” to the United Nations Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran and form a global consensus against the Islamic Republic in 2006, one year after Ahmadinejad was first elected as Iran's President.

It was the re-publication of the memoires by moderate conservative website Khabar Online on July 10 that lent some credibility to the disclosures about the beginning of Iran's isolation in the international community as a result of its secret and controversial nuclear program.

Rafsanjani wrote on March 21, 2006, that "factional disputes in Iran and the dismissal of efficient diplomats as well as uncalculated remarks by Ahmadinejad about uranium enrichment, human rights and terrorism provided an opportunity for the United States and its allies to portray Iran as a threat to the international community."

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In November, Rafsanjani wrote about his visit to the enrichment site in Natanz, adding that "Even Hassan Rouhani who is usually skeptical about these matters acknowledged that the efforts have been successful. Both Rouhani and I told -then – nuclear Chief Mohammad Aghazadeh that Ahmadinejad's uncalculated remarks hinder Iran's progress."

On December 11, Rafsanjani noted that the UN Security Council has unanimously ratified a resolution against Iran with even Qatar voting for it. "Ali Larijani [then secretary of the Supreme Council of National Security] came to see me. He was nervous and critical of Ahmadinejad because of his uncalculated remarks. He said he told the President to stop two of the enrichment cascades to avert the resolution, but he refused to do so. He has told Ahmadinejad to go and seek Khamenei's view about this."

Rafsanjani wrote on March 20, 2007: "We have a bad situation in foreign relations. We have been isolated except for relations with a few countries including Syria and Venezuela. Two resolutions have been issued against us and a third one is coming. Sanctions have been imposed on Iran anda US military attack is probable."

Rafsanjani was a major advocate of Iran's nuclear program and missile development since late 1980s when he realized that the armed forces were not capable of resisting Saddam Hussain's army. Iran's declining arsenal from the pre-revolutionary days under the monarchy and its lack of an effective air force and navy made it vulnerable in the region.

In 2006, when these parts of his memoires were written, his once deep influence in the Iranian political system had been indirectly curtailed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and he was on course to his final isolation in 2009, when Ahmadinejad became Iran's President for the second time in a rigged election marked by IRGC intervention.

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made the remarks during a meeting with his Italian counterpart Luigi Di Maio in Rome on Monday. “Pursuing political, economic and commercial cooperation is one of the main goals of this trip,” he said upon arrival. 

In the meeting, the Iranian diplomat said, “We want the JCPOA to work well. We seriously want a good and lasting agreement and we believe that Iran should be able to take full economic benefit from the JCPOA. The US should understand this fact well regarding guarantees.”

According to Iranian media, Di Mario noted that Italy is ready to play a positive role in the negotiations for the return of all parties to the JCPOA.

The visit comes as the efforts – mainly by the European Union -- to kickstart the stalled Vienna negotiations to restore the 2015 nuclear deal known as the JCPOA keep failing. The latest effort was the proximity talks in Qatari capital Doha on June 28-29, which ended without any progress. The US said that Iran did not show serious intent to move forward in the talks.

Later in the day, Amir-Abdollahian tweeted that “if the window of diplomacy is still open, it’s because of Iran's dynamic initiatives,” noting that the US cannot impose its one-sided views through accusation and sanctions. “Diplomacy is not a one-way street. Reaching the final deal needs the US' acceptance of realities, flexibility and initiatives.” 

The United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency shared its new report with news agencies on Saturday indicating that Iran escalated its enrichment operations by deploying more advanced IR-6 centrifuges that can quickly switch between different levels of uranium purification.

Behruz Kamalvandi, the spokesman for Iran’s atomic organization told local media on Sunday that his agency had informed the IAEA “At least two weeks earlier,” about the operation, and “the international media was exaggerating” the development “with particular intentions”.

He added that the IR-6 centrifuges would produce 20-percent enriched uranium.

Kamalvandi went on to say that his agency is simply carrying out its mandate according to Iran’s legislation. He was referring to a law adopted by the parliament in 2020 mandating higher degree of enrichment until the United States lifts economic sanctions.

Nuclear talks between Iran and world powers since April 2021 to restore the 2015 nuclear deal known as the JCPOA have not succeeded. Iran has been expanding its nuclear program since 2019 as US sanctions imposed by former President Donald Trump remain in effect.

The US and its European allies have repeatedly warned that the expansion of Iran’s nuclear program, talks to restore the JCPOA might become meaningless.

Western diplomats have long expressed concern about devices this cascade, or cluster, of centrifuges is equipped with.

The use of these so-called modified sub-headers means Iran could switch more quickly and easily to enriching to higher purity levels.

Iran’s move came ten days after indirect talks with the United States in Doha with the mediation of the European Union failed. The US said that Tehran did not come to the meeting in a serious negotiating posture and had simply repeated “extraneous” demands.

While Iran is required to inform the International Atomic Energy Agency about such a switch, if it chose not to, it might escape detection for some time as there is currently a lag between Iran's enrichment and IAEA inspectors' verification of what is produced.

"On 7 July 2022, Iran informed the Agency that, on the same day, it had begun feeding the aforementioned cascade with UF6 enriched up to 5% U-235," the confidential report to IAEA member states said. Reuters reported on the development after seeing the IAEA report.

UF6 refers to uranium hexafluoride gas which is fed into centrifuges to be enriched.

In a report on June 20 also seen by Reuters, the IAEA said that months after Iran informed it of its intention to use the cascade, Iran had begun feeding UF6 into it for passivation, a process that comes before enrichment.

The IAEA verified on July 6 that passivation had ended, Saturday's report said.

"On 9 July 2022, the Agency verified that Iran had begun feeding UF6 enriched up to 5% U-235 into the cascade of 166 IR-6 centrifuges with modified sub-headers for the declared purpose of producing UF6 enriched up to 20% U-235," it said.

Iran is already enriching to up to 60% elsewhere, well above the up to 20% it produced before its 2015 deal with major powers that capped its enrichment level at 3.67% but still below the roughly 90% of weapons grade.

The move is the latest step of many to breach and move well beyond the restrictions which the 2015 deal imposed on Iran's nuclear activities. It comes as talks to revive that deal are at an impasse and Western powers have warned time is running out to reach an agreement.

An agreement was said to have been close in March, after 11 months of talks in Vienna, but the negotiations stopped and remained stalled. The agreement would have removed major US economic sanctions, but Iran insisted that sanctions not directly related to the nuclear dispute should also be removed. On major cluster of sanctions target the Revolutionary Guard, but these are related to its role in terrorism and regional destabilization.

The United States pulled out of the 2015 nuclear agreement known as the JCPOA in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump, re-imposing sanctions against Tehran that the deal had lifted.

A year later, Iran began retaliating by breaching the deal's restrictions on the level of uranium enrichment. Tehran further escalated enrichment as Joe Biden won the US presidential election and embarked on talks with Iran and other JCPOA signatories to revive the agreement.

Now, Iran has accumulated enough 60-percent enriched uranium to be able to take the next step of enriching the fissile material to 90 percent purity needed for one nuclear bomb.

With reporting by Reuters