US Finds Iran's Latest Response In Nuclear Talks 'Not Constructive'

Foreign ministry spokesman Kanaani said in the early hours on Friday that the Islamic Republic’s response was prepared based on a "constructive approach."

“After receiving the American response, the expert team of the Islamic Republic carefully examined it and after evaluation at different levels, Iran's response was compiled and delivered to the coordinator tonight,” Kanaani said. "The text that was sent has a constructive approach aimed at finalizing the negotiations."

American journalist Laura Rozen quoted the unnamed EU official as saying that the bloc has received Iran’s response “just now”.

Earlier in the day, French President Emmanuel Macron expressed hope for a renewed Iran nuclear deal as President Ebrahim Raisi proclaimed defeat for US ‘maximum pressure.’

“I hope that in the next few days the JCPOA will be concluded,” Macron told French ambassadors in a Paris speech, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action as the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement is officially named.

In Washington, criticism of JCPOA revival has been stepped up both by Congresspeople and the advocacy group, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Fifty lawmakers, mostly Democrats sent a letter to Biden on Thursday asking him to “provide Congress with the full text of any proposal to rejoin the Iran nuclear agreement…including any side agreements, and consult with Congress prior to reentering that agreement.”

“I hope that in the next few days the JCPOA will be concluded,” Macron told French ambassadors in a Paris speech, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action as the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement is officially named.

Speaking to a Tehran conference honoring Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Raisi suggested United States officials had admitted that ‘maximum pressure’ had been defeated by the “will of the Iranian people” and had led nowhere. “The Islamic Republic will not accept domination,” Raisi said. “Today it has been proved that the Islamic Republic of Iran is…a power that will not bow to domination.”

Raisi’s remarks came as Iran is considering the latest US input, sent August 24 via the European Union, into what appears to be the last stage of 17-month talks designed to revive the JCPOA.

A series of reports, both in the Israeli media and emerging from briefings in Iran, have suggested the talks have come to focus on a stage-by-stage approach to reviving the JCPOA, which former US President Donald Trump left in 2018 while imposing ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions.

JCPOA revival in stages

According to an account given by Axios Thursday citing “sources briefed on the draft,” a third stage, beginning with ‘Reimplementation Day,’ would see the Iranian nuclear program back within JCPOA limits and the ‘full’ lifting of those US sanctions incompatible with the 2015 agreement.

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This would effectively postpone until ‘Reimplementation Day’ Tehran’s current insistence, as a condition for JCPOA revival, on the ending of an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) probe into unexplained uranium traces found in Iran.

A US official cited by Axios said that, while there would be interim steps before the third stage – both with Iran restricting its nuclear program and the US easing sanctions – any attempt by Iran by Reimplementation Day to go further unless the IAEA probe ended would risk “delaying the lifting of sanctions.”

Time for progress?

Such a timetable might give IAEA director-general Rafael Mariano Grossi time for progress. It could also avoid confrontation at the IAEA board of governors meeting September 12-16, which comes three months after the board censured Iran over failure to explain the uranium traces to the agency’s satisfaction.

But several senior Iranians, including Raisi, have this week stressed Iran’s commitment to the agency dropping the probe before the JCPOA is restored. Sardar Mohammad Ismail Kothari, a parliamentary deputy for Tehran, said Thursday that the current Raisi government, working closely with parliament, had been effective in pursuing Iran’s rights and in upping uranium enrichment to 60 precent, far above the 3.67 percent JCPOA cap, and near the 90 percent generally deemed ‘weapons grade.’

In Washington, criticism of JCPOA revival has been stepped up both by Congresspeople and the advocacy group, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Fifty lawmakers, mostly Democrats sent a letter to Biden on Thursday asking him to “provide Congress with the full text of any proposal to rejoin the Iran nuclear agreement…including any side agreements, and consult with Congress prior to reentering that agreement.”

But proponents of the 2015 agreement have also been active. “Let’s be clear: Trump’s plan of maximum pressure didn’t work,” tweeted Sara Jacobs, a Democrat in the House of Representatives Wednesday. Jeremy Ben-Ami, President of J Street, the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” advocacy group, tweeted Thursday a point-by-point rebuttal of AIPAC’s recent talking points and defended the JCPOA as “the best means of blocking Iran’s pathways to a nuclear weapon.”

“Additional activities [to produce highly enriched uranium] have imposed billions of unnecessary cost and hardship on the [Iranian people] and thwarted the country’s progress it deserves given that we have not been, and are not, seeking to build nuclear bombs, and that we have achieved nuclear know-how and can produce 20 percent enriched uranium for nuclear medicine and agricultural purposes if we want to,” Motahari, a former deputy speaker of the Iranian parliament, tweeted Wednesday.

“We have behaved as if the Revolution is synonymous with centrifuges [without which it] would be unable to achieve some of its fundamental ideals,” Motahari said. He added that officials’ insistence on guarantees, verification, and resolution of the remaining issues with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) now is necessary. “But we should never have reached this point.”

Motahari’s tweet appears to be an attempt at encouraging the authorities not to shut the door on a possible deal to restore the 2015 nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and not taking steps such as starting new enrichment activities that could jeopardize it, as a deal appears to be within reach.

An IAEA report seen by Reuters on Wednesday revealed that Iran has begun enriching uranium with the second of three cascades, or clusters, of advanced IR-6 centrifuges recently installed at an underground plant at Natanz.

The IR-6 is Iran’s most advanced model, far more efficient than the first-generation IR-1 that the 2015 deal lets it enrich with. For more than a year Iran has been using IR-6 centrifuges to enrich uranium to up to 60% purity, close to weapons-grade, at an above-ground plant at Natanz.

Ali Alizadeh, member of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, told the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA) Thursday that Iran accepted the EU's proposal, which The US appeared to have agreed to, “with two or three small conditions”.

Alizadeh said in the past few days many in Iran were hoping that a deal was possible “within a couple of days” and some even said foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was getting ready to leave the country to sign the agreement. “But hopes of an agreement are almost disappearing due to the United States’ recent note (response to the proposal),” he added.

According to Alizadeh, Iranians believed that the EU's proposal was prepared with US cooperation and consent. “The American side’s behavior is now a little different from before and therefore given the recent US response, reaching an agreement can take longer.”

Amir-Abdollahian said Wednesday that Iran is “carefully reviewing” the European Union’s August 8 proposal but “stronger guarantees from the other party” are required for a “sustainable deal”. Iranian officials have repeatedly said that a deal will not be final until “everything is agreed upon”.

Pundits believe a restored deal may be weak given the many other unresolved issues between Iran and the United States.

“Even if this happens, as in 2015, it will only be an expression of tactical tolerance of the other side, and the foundations of such an agreement will be shaky,” moderate-conservative Fararu website said in an editorial Thursday. “Chances of Iran and the US reaching a sustainable agreement will remain very low as long as the problems between them are not addressed in a fundamental manner,” it said.

Israel opposes a return to the 2015 deal, which would lift sanctions on Iran and would limit its nuclear program for a few years.

Former president Donald Trump pulled out of the deal in 2018 and reimposed harsh sanctions, prompting Tehran to violate the pact's nuclear limits. Biden has vowed to revive the agreement while ensuring the security of Israel, Iran's regional arch foe.

"The President underscored US commitment to never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon" in a call in which Biden and Lapid also discussed "threats posed by Iran," the White House said in a statement.

In its own readout of the call, Lapid's office said they "spoke at length about the negotiations on a nuclear agreement, and their shared commitment to stopping Iran’s progress towards a nuclear weapon."

The nuclear deal appeared near revival in March. But indirect talks between Tehran and Washington then broke down over several issues, including Tehran's insistence that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) close its probes into uranium traces found at three undeclared sites before the nuclear pact is revived.

Biden and Lapid in July signed a joint pledge to deny Iran nuclear arms, a show of unity between allies long divided over diplomacy with Tehran. But Lapid said last week that if the 2015 deal is revived, Israel will not be bound by it.

With reporting by Reuters

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told a press conference in Moscow Wednesday that while Iran was “carefully reviewing” a text circulated by the European Union August 8, a “sustainable deal” needed “stronger guarantees from the other party.”

Reports following the United States August 24 input on the EU text suggest Washington and Tehran are far closer in efforts to restore the 2015 agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). A former senior official in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told Iran International Tuesday that two to three weeks were needed.

In line with that timetable, the IAEA governing board is due to meet September 12-16. The meeting comes three months after the 35-member body passed a resolution – moved by the US and three European states – censuring Iran over its failure to satisfy the agency over uranium traces found by inspectors in three sites undeclared as nuclear-related.

Amir-Abdollahian: ‘Close this case’

Reiterating recent statements by President Ebrahim Raisi and Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Agency of Iran, Amir-Abdollahian said the agency should “close this case” as “such politically motivated demands are unacceptable.” The agency, the foreign minister said, should “focus only on its technical task.”

This contradicts claims made by a US official to Reuters August 23 that Iran had dropped such a demand – although it has also been suggested that Tehran and Washington might find a way to kick the issue into the long grass.

Iran argues that after the IAEA published in 2015 a final assessment of Iran’s nuclear work before 2003, it then resumed enquiries after allegations made in 2018 by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu supposedly based on documents stolen in Iran. The US argues, regardless of the JCPOA, that Iran should explain the uranium traces under its basic ‘safeguards’ commitments as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Congressional hurdle?

Aside from the IAEA board meeting September 12-15, the Biden administration’s efforts to renew the JCPOA may be affected by Congressional elections due November 8. A recent poll for CBS found that Republican gains may be less than earlier projected, but US politics remains volatile given a range of issues including abortion, gasoline prices, and the polarizing role of former president Donald Trump.

While Iran is hardly uppermost in voters’ mind, the nuclear deal interests many representatives. A letter circulating since Sunday, expressing concerns over renewing the JCPOA and opposing any easing of sanctions, had attracted over 40 signatures of members of the House of Representatives by early Wednesday, including 30 Democrats.

According to outlines of a possible agreement to revive the JCPOA reported by the Jerusalem Post, Biden would lift many US sanctions five days in advance of a review by Congress that is required under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Act passed 2015. Should the two houses of Congress reject the deal, Biden could still override their wishes.

Various reports on the emerging agreement over JCPOA revival refer to a number of phases lasting 165 days. This could allow either the US or Iran to back away if they felt the other side was not taking their agreed steps – with the IAEA probe possibly caught up in the process.