Deal With KSA May Facilitate Return To Nuclear Deal, Iran Media Say

Mamdouh Saleh, a member of the parliament of Bahrain, told the Arabic service of Sputnik on Monday that negotiations between his country and Iran to renew relations are in process.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani also said Monday that Tehran is ready to improve ties with the Arab state again.

Meanwhile, Ahmed Al Musallam, Speaker of the Bahraini Parliament, held a meeting with a delegation from the Iranian Parliament in Manama.

The Iranian parliamentary delegation, headed by Mojtaba Rezakhah is in Bahrain to attend the International Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly. This is the first time in seven years that Bahrain has received a senior delegation from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Manama severed its relations with Tehran one day after Saudi Arabia cut ties with the Islamic Republic in 2015.

Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to re-establish diplomatic ties after Chinese-mediated talks in Beijing last week. The two sides agreed to reinstate embassies and missions after seven years of deadlock.

While Saudi Arabia does not have relations with Israel, the Prime Minister and the leaders of the Israeli opposition are at loggerheads over the normalization of Saudi Arabia's ties with Iran, accusing each other of negligence, which led to the improvement of Tehran-Riyadh relations.

Israel’s Yediot Aharonot daily wrote Tuesday that the negotiations between Iran and Bahrain will be an important development after seven years of stalemate.

The State Department’s outgoing spokesperson Ned Price however, signaled that efforts are underway for their release. He also sounded positive about a deal last week between Iran and Saudi Arabia to restore relations, brokered by China.

There have long been signs that a US agreement to free $7 billion frozen by South Korean banks would be the price to pay for the release of three dual-nationals considered in effect hostages held by Iran. But after Iran’s deadly crackdown on popular protests and its supply of weapons to Russia, the proposition has become politically costly for the Biden administration.

At the same time, Price once again reiterated that restoring the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) with Iran “is not on the agenda.” He said the Biden administration thought it was “on the precipice of it, only for the Iranians to once again prove that their word was unreliable and to pull back what they had agreed to.”

Talks that began in April 2021 reached a deadlock in early September 2022 when Washington blamed Tehran for presenting “extraneous demands.”

“So that’s not on the agenda. What is always going to be on our agenda as a first resort is diplomacy. We continue to believe that diplomacy is the only permanent, durable, verifiable means by which to address Iran’s nuclear program. We’re not giving up our ambitions and our hope on that, even as we’re preparing for all potential contingencies,” Price said.

It is not clear if JCPOA talks are not on the agenda then what is US diplomacy pursuing? In the past months, both Washington and the European powers involved in talks with Tehran have raised the issue of Iranian weapons supplies to Russia and its gross violations of human rights.

It seems that the West is pursuing either a more comprehensive deal beyond the nuclear issue or perhaps piecemeal agreements on specific issues.

An Iranian analyst in Tehran told ILNA news website Tuesday that the US might be pursuing a limited and temporary agreement to address some dangerous aspects of Iran’s nuclear program. Khosrow Shahin said that Washington might also be aiming for partial agreements on various issues, such as the release of prisoners to reduce the final cost of a full nuclear deal.

Some reprieve from oil sanctions could be one of the incentives for a cap on Iran’s uranium enrichment, similar to the 1990s Iraqi ‘oil for food’ UN program, although Iran needs hard currencies to deal with its worsening economic situation. In February NBC News reported that if Iran’s frozen funds are released in exchange for prisoners, limitations on how to spend the money might apply.

Regarding the Chinese brokered agreement between Riyadh and Tehran, Price said the United States supports “dialogue, we support direct diplomacy, we support anything that would serve to de-escalate tensions in the region and potentially help to prevent conflict.”

Price also tried to dismiss suggestions that China can supplant the US role in the region, emphasizing that the Biden administration has accomplished a lot in enhancing cooperation between regional countries.

“So, I think in any way you look at it, America is deeply engaged with the Middle East. We have, I think, demonstrated results in those efforts to leave a region that is more stable, is more integrated, is more prosperous. We have a long way to go…,” Price, who will soon be leaving as spokesman said.

But the White House also said that the United States is continuing to engage with Iran over how to get home Americans unjustly detained there.

"There's no deal. And the last thing that we want to do is give false hope to families that have been waiting for a long time for their loved ones to come home," White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.

The Iranian foreign ministry once again said earlier Monday that a "written agreement has been signed by the official representative of the United States” though it did not specify who.

Three US dual nationals and possibly two permanent residents are held by Iran in what human rights organizations call hostage diplomacy by the Islamic Republic.

Tehran, which lost the chance to conclude a nuclear deal with the US and its European allies last September, has been repeatedly claiming that a prisoner release is imminent. It is believed that in case of an agreement over the hostages, the US would agree to the release at least $7 billion in Iran’s frozen funds held in South Korea.

It would be a politically difficult decision by the Biden administration to hand over money to the Iranian regime at a time when Tehran is supplying weapons to Russia and violently suppressing its own people.

“You can imagine such discussions are sensitive and highly consequential for the US citizens who have been wrongfully detained. We will not detail any diplomatic efforts underway,” a senior official in Washington is reported to have said told Hannah Kaviani, a journalist at Radio Farda.

It comes amidst a public statement in which Washington has called Iran’s claim of a prisoner swap deal, a “cruel lie” but the latest revelations offer hope for families whose loved ones are held hostage in the Islamic Regime, that negotiations are really underway.

Roger Carstens, the US Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs (SPEHA), is on a delegation to Doha this week in which hostages are to be a major talking point, though it is unknown how many dual-national hostages are currently being held in Iran.

“Special Envoy Carstens will deliver remarks at the Global Security Forum and engage with government representatives and stakeholders on matters related to the resolution of wrongful detention and hostage cases worldwide,” the State Department added.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani claimed on Monday that a prisoner exchange is "feasible" and asked the US officials to be "realistic" in this regard.

"If the American side takes a realistic approach to this issue, the exchange of prisoners can be carried out as a completely humanitarian issue," he said.

"It is good that Saudi Arabia and Iran want to develop a less confrontational relationship with each other, and that is what can be said about it," Scholz said at a news conference on Monday alongside Bhutan's prime minister, Lotey Tshering.

Scholz's remark was one of the first by Western leaders regarding an agreement signed in Beijing on March 10, whereby Tehran and Riyadh agreed to reestablish diplomatic relations after seven years of hostility. China played the role of a broker and apparently a guarantor of the deal.

Iranian officials and media have widely portrayed the agreement as a huge defeat for the United States and Israel in the Middle East and the ascendance of China as a superior power in the Middle East.

Relations between Western states and Iran have deteriorated in the past six months and long-running negotiations over Tehran's nuclear issue came to a deadlock last September. A harsh crackdown on protests by the Iranian regime and its supply of killer drones to Russia worsened relations.

China and Europe, both dependent on oil imports, can benefit from lack of conflict in the Persian Gulf region.