Iran Pundits Claim Talks Will Resume Once Protests Calm Down

What triggered the new debates was Tehran's declaration about expanding 60-percent uranium enrichment at a second site in response to the IAEA Board of Governor's resolution this month condemning Iran's lack of cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In an article in Tehran's leading economic daily, Donyay-e Eqtesad, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, the former head of the Iranian parliament's Foreign Policy and National Security Committee said that the new developments indicate that the nuclear dispute with the West has become more challenging than ever as the two sides are left to choose between diplomacy or war.

The Europeans trio, the UK, France and Germany, condemned Iran's "nuclear escalation" after IAEA Chief Rafael Grossi confirmed the news about 60 percent enrichment at a new site. The E-3 said they will consult with their international partners on how to deal with the issue. This comes while Russia's nuclear negotiator Mikhail Ulyanov has supported Iran's move as "A predictable decision on Tehran's part regarding US and Europe's action to escalate tensions."

Falahatpisheh told Donya-ye Eqtesad that "handling the nuclear challenge has become very difficult as Iran is taking steps to preserve its bargaining power in possible negotiations." He added that the West's policy is to continue its pressures on Iran through imposing sanctions. This will bring the debate out of the diplomatic framework. At the same time, Iran which is badly hit by the sanctions does not wish to waste any time and that is why it resorted to [more] 60-percent enrichment."

He said the next step for Europe would be taking Iran's case to the UN Security Council. "If this happens, Tehran might boost enrichment to beyond the 60-percent level. So, the Europeans will activate the trigger mechanism" that brings back all the previous international sanctions against Tehran. He said in any case Iran will boost its enrichment level and this is in no one's interest.

As a result, argued Falahatpisheh, "there are only two options: Starting a war or returning to the negotiating table.” It appears that by expanding the 60-percent enrichment, “Iran is saying that it is also prepared for war." He added that in case the West begins a hybrid war against Tehran, Iran will also follow a series of hybrid challenges. However, as far as Tehran is concerned, going to war is the least likely option.

Meanwhile, Reformist daily Arman Emrooz wrote on Saturday that although the US government wishes to return to the 2015 nuclear accord (JCPOA) or a similar agreement, it knows that accepting a deal will harm its image in the international community. Although Arman Emrooz did not elaborate, it most likely meant that Washington does not want to make a deal with a country plunged in turmoil for over two months as protesters take to the streets daily, chanting slogans against its embattled dictator Ali Khamenei.

The paper quoted Iranian analyst Mehdi Motaharnia as saying that Iran and its supporters Russia and China are in favor of the status quo. This corroborates with what Khamenei said in his speech to the Basij militia on Saturday when he absolutely ruled out any sort of dialogue with the United States.

In one of the latest political commentaries that suggest reaching an agreement with the United States can calm down the ongoing protests in Iran, conservative political commentator Mohammad Mohajeri said: "The Iranian government should accept international laws and respect others' rights and interact with the world community in a way that would put the country's economy in a good shape. And this is not possible in any way other than [reviving] the JCPOA."

Negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement known as the JCPOA stopped in August after the United States rejected demands by Iran.

Scholz said that "everything must be done to ensure that Iran does not get nuclear bombs and also no carrier rockets with which it can transport them."

Following a meeting with French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, German Chancellor Scholz said in Berlin Friday that both countries want to further strengthen their cooperation in face of the energy crisis.

They had signed a joint declaration to this effect.

Germany already exports electricity to France and receives gas supplies in return, Scholz said, which will now be expanded further.

Scholz underlined the "exceptionally close and rich" ties between the France and Germany, adding that the two countries are also working closely together in many other areas, such as the ambitious joint advancement of the European Union's climate policy.

In view of the uranium enrichments in Iran, Scholz stressed that Europe's goal remains to prevent the country from becoming nuclear-armed.

IRNA, the official news agency, November 24 portrayed Iran’s acceleration of its nuclear program since 2019 as a series of responses to United States, Israeli or European actions – beginning 2018 with the US “covenant-breaking” in leaving the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), and imposing ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions.

Iran’s announcement Tuesday that it was enriching uranium to 60 percent at the Fordow site was yet another “reaction to the excesses of the West,” IRNA argued, just as enrichment to 60 percent at Natanz, another nuclear site, in April came in response to “sabotage actions” at the site attributed to Israel.

In fact, Iran decided to start 60-percent enrichment in early 2021 just as the new US administration had announced its readiness to return to the JCPOA and talks in Vienna were about to begin.

Tehran announced the latest move as a reply to a resolution raised by France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States passed November 17 at the board of the 37-member board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The US and ‘E3’ had “tied a technical and legal case…to events inside the country and protests turned into riots,” IRNA argued. “The troika of Europe and the United States stopped the nuclear talks under the pretext of unrest inside Iran.”

Casting further doubts on talks, IRNA argued, was the looming return to power of Benjamin Netanyahu, which it suggested would “definitely intensify…the Zionist regime’s delusional claims against the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

‘Impasse’ in diplomacy

Separately, Fararu, a privately owned news agency, carried a discussion with Hosseini Kanani-Moghadam, head of Iran’s conservatively-inclined Green Party, and Fereydoun Majlesi, a former diplomat who has for some time been pessimistic over the JCPOA.

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Majlesi argued that “the West” had long given up hope of negotiating with Iran and sought to re-use tactics that had undermined the Soviet Union. “Western countries,” he said, had judged that President Ebrahim Raisi’s government, which took office in 2021, inclined against the JCPOA with ministers asking why Iran accepted nuclear restrictions while gaining nothing from the agreement.

The result was an “impasse” in diplomatic efforts to restore the JCPOA – an impression confirmed, Majlesi said, by the French president and Canadian prime minister recently meeting “supporters of subversion in our country,” a reference to exiled activists and social-media ‘influencers.’ This accelerated an “agenda against Iran” over “recent years” that had “led to significant economic pressures” aimed at “impoverishing Iran.”

Kanani-Moghadam argued that Iran retained political levers “in the event of the escalation of hostile policies,” including “complete withdrawal from the JCPOA” (presumably ending all nuclear restrictions but staying within the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), or even leaving the NPT.

Bagheri-Kani in India: Focus on economy

Post-JCPOA thinking were also evident in discussions during the visit to India of Ali Bagheri-Kani, deputy Iranian foreign minister and leading nuclear negotiator. While IRNA Thursday reported Bagheri-Kani attacking “the atmosphere created by some western media regarding the developments in Iran,” its focus was business.

While Bagheri-Kani’s brief as one of five deputy ministers is politics, his interview with Asia International News Agency(ANI) also focused on economics, and how commerce might continue should US ‘maximum pressure’ last. ANI noted that bilateral trade had risen 46 percent between 2011-12 and 2019-20.

While criticizing the US for disrupting world energy security with sanctions against Iran, Russia, and Venezuela, Bagheri-Kani highlighted potential for Iran to help India over energy in return for food exports, presumably through barter or non-dollar arrangements. He also stressed that India’s project for developing Chabahar port, in Sistan-Baluchistan province, was continuing.

New Delhi has been slow to develop the port in fear of US punitive action under ‘maximum pressure.’ Once a major buyer of Iranian oil, India has grown increasingly frustrated at Washington’s approach. It abstained, along with Pakistan, at the recent vote condemning Iran at the IAEA board.

In response to questions sent by Iran International, the State Department said that the US is particularly worried about violence in Mahabad, a Kurdish majority city in western Iran. Government security forces escalated violence against protesters in Kurdish majority cities in the region on November 16 and since then more heavily armed units have been deployed to the region.

“Iran's leaders are blaming so-called separatists, and they continue to blame the United States, for the protests unfolding across their country. In fact, Iran's leaders have no one to blame but themselves,” the State Department said in an email.

Since the protests began in mid-September, top officials of the clerical regime have been blaming foreign “enemies” for fomenting the uprising, the biggest since the establishment of the Islamic Republic 43 years ago. After government intelligence and security forces failed to end the unrest, the government began blaming “separatists” for encouraging and supporting the protests and particularly targeted Iranian Kurds.

But the State Department said, “The regime's brutal crackdown, along with years of denying Iranians their human rights and perpetrating state-sponsored violence against women, show that Iran's leaders seem incapable of listening to their own people.”

Activists have called for large protests Thursday across the nation to support the Kurdish cities targeted by military units. Already there have been protests in other cities to condemn the violence. A significant number of Kurds in Iran are Sunnis and this week a prominent Sunni religious leader, Mawlana Abdolhamid of the Sunni Baluch population in southeastern Iran voiced support for them. The Baluch have also also brutally targeted by government forces since September 30.

“We continue to pursue accountability for those involved and support the Iranian people in their pursuit of freedom,” the State Department said.

More uranium enrichment

On the question of Iran expanding its nuclear program by more uranium enrichment at a new atomic site, the department said the US is aware of Iran’s claims that it is enriching at 60-percent and already has a large stockpile of highly enriched fissile material “for which it has no credible civilian use.”

After 18 months of negotiations to revive the Obama-era nuclear accord known as JCPOA, talks came to an impasse in August, with the US dismissing Iranian demands that it said were outside the JCPOA framework.

Last week the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) passed a resolution that censured Tehran for lack of cooperation with the UN watchdog. Iran responded by threatening “an appropriate response” and later announced it had started enrichment at its Fordow nuclear facility.

“Iran's apparent notion that it could somehow pressure the IAEA or its Member States on the issue of ongoing safeguards investigations into possible undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran by further escalating its uranium enrichment activities is deluded,” the State Department wrote to Iran International.

The dispute with the IAEA concerns undeclared nuclear activities two decades ago, but the international watchdog is demanding clear answers from Tehran. Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said Thursday that Iran expects the IAEA to shelve its investigation before a deal is made to revive the JCPOA.

“As we have made clear, Iran's continued nuclear escalations are unconstructive, and they will not provide Iran with any leverage,” the State Department told Iran International.

The Ministry of Defence in London tweeted that Russia had “likely conceived of the UAV [unmanned aerial vehicles] campaign to make up for its severe shortage of cruise missiles.” Reports of the Russian forces using Iranian drones, mainly Shaheed-136, surfaced in September, but were until November denied by Tehran.

Although the use of Iranian-made drones had met with “limited success” with most of those launched neutralized, the British ministry said Moscow would “probably seek resupply” as “Russia can probably procure UAVs from overseas more rapidly than it can manufacture new cruise missiles domestically.” The drones had been both one-way or ‘kamikaze’ and reusable UAVs, the ministry said.

Some former Iranian military sources were quoted elsewhere as saying that the country can produce around 20 drones a month, which is well short of Russian’s needs.

Both sides in the Ukraine war have deployed drones, with Ukraine utilizing Turkish-made Bayraktars along with US-supplied Switchblade drones. The Russian-backed governor of Crimea province said Tuesday that five attacks, including one targeting the Balaklava power station and three on Russian naval ships, had been repelled.

The British Ministry of Defence in its tweets Wednesday said Moscow had used Iranian-made drones “largely…against tactical military targets and the Ukrainian electricity grid.” France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States have condemned Russia’s deployment of Iranian drones as an alleged violation of arms-trade provisions in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

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Iran ‘Sticking to its positions’

Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said Tuesday that Tehran had “sold very few Iranian drones in the framework of defense cooperation with Russia 11 months before the start of the Ukraine war.” Amir-Abdollahian said Iran and Ukrainian military officials had met in a third country to discuss the issue, and that “we are continuing our investigations.”

Amir-Abdollahian appeared to suggest that the Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba had told him by telephone that a drone captured by Ukrainian forces had Russian markings but “looks like an Iranian witness drone,” a model rendered in English as ‘Witness-136.’ This, Amir-Abdollahian argued, was “proof that Iran is sticking to its positions.”

The foreign minister said Iran was committed to diplomatic solutions both to the Ukraine war and the current stand-off in talks aimed at restoring the 2015 nuclear agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). Amir-Abdollahian reiterated Iran’s view than the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should shelve its enquiry into unexplained uranium traces found in sites not declared as nuclear-related.

‘Exchange of messages should continue’

Amir-Abdollahian suggested that while efforts continued to revive the JCPOA, differences with the US remained on three issues, on which the three European JCPOA signatories were lining up with Washington. “One of these issues is solving the remaining issues of the agency [over the uranium traces], and the other issue is related to economic guarantee,” he said, referring to Iran’s expectation of being cushioned against the economic effects of the US again leaving the JCPOA and imposing sanctions, as it did in 2018 under previous president Donald Trump.

The foreign minister said that “the exchange of messages [with the US] should continue.” American officials have in recent weeks suggested that their focus is no longer on JCPOA restoration, and along with the three European states and the European Union have imposed new sanctions on Iran over military links with Russia and its response to domestic unrest.