SULAIMANI (ESTA) — World powers and Iran return to Vienna on Monday to hold talks in an attempt to salvage a 2015 nuclear deal, but few expect a breakthrough as Tehran’s atomic activities continue in an apparent bid to gain leverage against the West, Reuters reported on Sunday.
Reuters cited diplomats as saying that time is running low to resurrect the pact, which former U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018, angering Iran and dismaying the other world powers involved – Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.
Iran and the world powers had held six rounds of indirect talks between April and June. Talks suspended as Iran was heading to hold a presidential election in June. The new round begins after a hiatus triggered by the election of a new Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi.
Iran’s new negotiating team is insisting that all U.S. and EU sanctions imposed since 2017 be lifted.
In parallel, Tehran’s conflicts with the U.N. atomic watchdog, which monitors the nuclear programme, have festered, Reuters said. Iran has pressed ahead with its enrichment programme and the IAEA says its inspectors have been treated roughly and refused access to re-install monitoring cameras at a site it deems essential to reviving the deal with world powers.
“They are doing enough technically so they can change their basic relationship with the West to be able to have a more equal dialogue in the future,” Reuters quoted a Western diplomat involved in the talks as saying.
Two European diplomats told Reuters that it seemed Iran was simply playing for time to accumulate more material and know-how.
Western diplomats say they will head to Monday’s talks on the premise that they resume where they left off in June, Reuters reported. They have warned that if Iran continues with its maximalist positions and fails to restore its cooperation with the IAEA then they will have to quickly review their options.
Meanwhile, Iran’s top negotiator and foreign minister both repeated on Friday that full sanctions lifting would be the only thing on the table in Vienna.
“If this is the position that Iran continues to hold on Monday, then I don’t see a negotiated solution,’ one of the European diplomats told Reuters.
Several diplomats said Iran was now between four to six weeks away from the “breakout time” which it needs to amass enough fissile material for a single nuclear weapon, Reuters said. The diplomats, however, cautioned it was still about two years from being able to weaponize it.
Reuters said if the talks collapse, the likelihood is the United States and its allies will initially confront Iran at the IAEA next month by calling for an emergency meeting.
However, they will also want to try to keep Russia, which has political influence on Iran, and China, which provides economic breathing space to Tehran through oil purchases, on side as they initially seek alternative diplomatic options.
Diplomats told Reuters that one scenario which Washington has suggested is negotiating an open-ended interim accord with Tehran as long as a permanent deal isn’t achieved. However, they say that it would take time and there is no certainty Iran has any appetite for it.
“Iran may calculate that its unconstrained nuclear advances and unmonitored centrifuge production will put more pressure on the West to give ground in talks quickly,” the news agency cited Eurasia analyst Henry Rome as saying in a note.
“But it will likely have the opposite effect, signaling that the new Iranian team does not have an interest in resolving the nuclear issue and hastening the switch toward a more coercive policy next year.”
In an interview with BBC Sounds on Saturday, U.S. special envoy to Iran Robert Malley said the United States and its partners are likely to exert pressure on Iran if it uses talks as pretext to accelerate its nuclear programme.
“If Iran thinks it can use this time to build more leverage and then come back and say they want something better it simply won’t work. We and our partners won’t go for it,” Malley said.
“If that’s Iran’s approach, which is to try to use the negotiations as cover for an accelerated nuclear programme, and as I say, drag its feet at the nuclear table, we will have to respond in a way that is not our preference,” said Malley, who heads up the U.S. negotiating team. “Nobody should be surprised if at that point there is increased pressure on Iran.
“We hope not to get that there, but if we are, then pressure will have to increase to send a message to Iran that the choice it is making is the wrong one. That it has a different path available to it, but it’s not a path open indefinitely because Iran’s nuclear programme is putting the very essence of the deal negotiated [in 2015] at risk,” he said.
(Esta Media Network/Reuters)
