Iran nuclear talks are restarting. Here’s what’s at stake : NPR

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Rafael Mariano Grossi (left) and the Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian met in Tehran on Tuesday. Grossi urged more access to the Islamic Republic before diplomatic talks resume over Tehran’s tattered nuclear deal with world powers. Vahid Salemi / AP Hide caption

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Vahid Salemi / AP

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Rafael Mariano Grossi (left) and the Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian met in Tehran on Tuesday. Grossi urged more access to the Islamic Republic before diplomatic talks resume over Tehran’s tattered nuclear deal with world powers.

Vahid Salemi / AP

Talks to revive the nuclear deal with Iran will start again on Monday in Vienna. It will be the seventh round of meetings between the United States, Iran, European powers and China, but the first in nearly six months.

And a lot has happened since the last round to raise the stakes on each deal.

In summary, the 2015 agreement granted Iran eased economic sanctions in return for restrictions on its nuclear program. President Trump abandoned the deal in 2018 and reinstated the sanctions that the US had lifted. Iran responded by publicly ramping up its machines for enriching uranium – the nuclear fuel required for a bomb.

Iran and the US – along with the other world powers involved in the deal – say they want to restore it. But they are stuck with who takes the first steps.

Since talks stalled, Iran has elected a new, tough president who has increased his country’s demands for a new deal. And behind the scenes, there have been a number of attacks on Iran’s nuclear program, believed to have originated from Israel, including the murder of a leading Iranian scientist a year ago. This increases the risk of conflicts at the negotiating table.

Neither the US nor Iran are currently adhering to the agreement

The Trump administration argued that the deal drafted by the Obama White House was too short – parts of it will expire in 2025 – and should have required fundamental changes in Iranian politics. When Trump reinstated the sanctions, he stopped most of Iran’s oil sales. When other partners to the deal – the European Union, China, Russia – objected, the US threatened that any company doing business with Iran would be cut off from doing business with the US as well. This is now a lever for Biden’s negotiators.

In response to the US exit, Iran methodically broke the boundaries of the agreement – its conservative parliament even passed a law calling for such violations. Since then, the country has stored more enriched uranium than the agreement allows. And it has enriched its offer well beyond what is stipulated in the agreement, that is, closer to the level of enrichment required for a weapon.

Back when the US signed the deal and Iran abided by it, analysts said its program was frozen and at least a year away from producing enough enriched uranium to make a bomb. Experts say it could be another month if Iran wanted to take the risk. (But making a real bomb, testing it, and loading it onto missiles could take a year or two.) Perhaps most worryingly, Iran has restricted access to inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, a nuclear regulatory agency that oversees its nuclear sites. You could be missing out on important information.

To get back into the deal, the US would have to break the complicated web of sanctions. Iran would have to open up again to inspectors, dismantle equipment and ship uranium or reduce its enrichment. Either way, Iran has already learned more about how to make a nuclear weapon.

Iran has a new leadership that is demonstrating a tougher negotiating position

Amid resentment at the country’s weak economy and disappointment over the failure of the deal, Iranians elected President Ibrahim Raisi in June. He’s more of a hardliner than his predecessor Hassan Rouhani, who agreed to the deal in 2015. Raisi seems determined to show that he can get a better deal for his people.

The man expected to lead the negotiations for Iran recently said they shouldn’t even be called “nuclear talks”. He claims it is about sanctions. “We have no nuclear talks,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani told state media, “because the nuclear issue was fully agreed in 2015.”

Iranian officials are basically saying that since it was the US that broke the deal first, it should be the US that is taking the first steps to get it going again by lifting all sanctions. And, burned by Trump’s withdrawal, they want a guarantee that the deal will stay in place after the next US presidential election – a promise that is unlikely to be possible in the US system.

The Biden administration wants a deal, but it won’t wait long

US officials see the new stance on the other side and say it is up to Iran to prove it is interested in a deal. In an interview with NPR last week, US negotiator Robert Malley lowered expectations. “If [Iran is] Dragging their feet around the negotiating table, accelerating their pace with their nuclear program, that will be their answer to whether or not they want to get back on the deal, “said Malley.” And it will be a negative one if they choose. to do.”

He calls on Iran to at least meet directly with the US, which the US rejects. He and the European heads of state and government have called on Iran to stop breaking the terms of the treaty. Malley told NPR that if Iran does not return to the deal, the US “would need other diplomatic and other efforts to try to fulfill Iran’s nuclear ambitions”. He said Iran’s nuclear advances may soon make it too late for an agreement. “We don’t have much time to conclude that Iran has chosen a different path,” he said.

On occasion, the US has also raised the idea of ​​adding new terms to the deal – including possibly extending the life of the deal or attempting to include restrictions on the Iranian missile program. Iran says these are non-starters.

Proponents of a deal say it will contain Iran’s nuclear weapons. Opponents say it will put Iran on missiles and militants

Proponents of re-entry into the deal say it prevents Iran from building a bomb. Even Trump’s defense minister said Iran was complying with the rules when the deal went into effect. Proponents of a deal say other problems with Iran – such as helping militants, human rights abuses, threats against Israel and Saudi Arabia – can be separated and more easily resolved when the country does not pose a nuclear threat.

Opponents of the agreement say the Iranian regime is shaky and violated under the sanctions. They claim Iran will make further concessions to get out of sanctions, or may even be overthrown at some point. Easing the sanctions would give the Iranian government access to huge oil revenues that it could use to destabilize the Middle East. Some Israeli officials believe that sabotage or even military strikes are preferable to stop the Iranian nuclear program from moving forward.

But that’s seen as a risky approach that could lead to war. The Biden government wants to remove Iran from the list of possible trouble spots in the world. And Iran wants to do business with the world. That could be enough to lead both countries to a new agreement, be it a return to the old agreement or a half step towards easing tensions. The latter could mean a partial deal – lifting some US sanctions in exchange for Iran backing down some of its moves.

https://www.npr.org/2021/11/28/1058533008/iran-nuclear-deal-talks-us