Negotiations over the renewal of the Iran nuclear deal have reached “the finish line,” according to Russia’s lead negotiator, despite international tensions over the Russian invasion of Ukraine and misgivings about Iran’s “refusal to cooperate” with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
“A long and grueling marathon,” Russian Ambassador Mikhail Ulyanov tweeted. “Now it is almost over.”
RUSSIA THREATENS TO EXECUTE WESTERN VOLUNTEERS AS UKRANIAN FOREIGN LEGION GROWS
That optimism found an echo among some Western negotiators participating in the talks, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s team acknowledged that “we are close to a possible deal.” Iranian officials cautioned against premature celebrations, but Ulyanov downplayed the chances of a last-minute derailment.
“I cannot imagine that at this stage the talks might collapse,” Ulyanov told reporters in Vienna. “It would be absolutely irresponsible, especially at this stage when we are actually on the finish line.”
The negotiations have dragged out for nearly a year, as Iranian officials demanded that President Joe Biden lift all sanctions imposed by then-President Donald Trump — not simply the sanctions connected directly to the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — and pushed for a signal from Congress that a future U.S. leader would not follow Trump’s precedent of exiting the deal when Biden leaves office.
U.S. officials long have said they would consider lifting only the Trump-era sanctions that are “inconsistent” with U.S. obligations under the 2015 pact, but Iranian officials have applied additional pressure by continuing to expand their nuclear program.
“It is only natural to be close to the final agreement after 11 months of long and difficult talks,” Iran’s Seyed Mohammed Marandi wrote on Twitter. “However, it requires an extra effort to resolve a couple of important remaining issues, before one can say the negotiations are done. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.”
The trajectory of the talks has caused bipartisan alarm and even split the U.S. negotiating team. State Department special envoy Rob Malley’s deputy for the talks, Richard Nephew, resigned from the team in December and made clear in February that he left “due to a sincere difference of opinion concerning policy.” Another former State Department official, who served in the Trump administration but resigned over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, claimed that Malley has agreed to lift sanctions imposed for terrorism activity.
“The U.S. has promised to lift sanctions on some of the regime’s worst terrorists and torturers, leading officials in the regime’s WMD infrastructure, and is currently trying to lift sanctions on the IRGC itself,” Gabriel Noronha wrote on Twitter, citing former colleagues from the State Department and Europe who are still working on the matter.
Noronha claimed that those former colleagues said the negotiations are “essentially run” by Ulyanov, a statement echoed by Iran hawks on Capitol Hill. “The Biden admin is making Russia into an international pariah except for the part where they’re having Russia run talks in Vienna aimed at dismantling sanctions against Iran and giving its Death To America regime a nuclear arsenal,” Omri Ceren, national security adviser to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, wrote on Twitter.
The International Atomic Energy Agency reportedly informed global powers this week that Iran’s uranium stockpiles are increasing, although they have not enriched that material quite to the level needed to produce nuclear weapons.
“The clerical regime in Iran is approaching the point at which no outside power could prevent it from building nuclear weapons,” a new Foundations for Defense of Democracy memo warns. “The Islamic Republic has already enriched enough uranium that it could produce weapons-grade uranium (WGU) for at least four bombs. The short dash to producing WGU shows that Tehran has overcome the most difficult challenge that faces an aspiring threshold state.”
Those criticisms extend a bipartisan assessment of Russia’s posture in the talks, dating back to the original Iran nuclear deal. Then-Rep. Eliot Engel, who was the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, believed that “Russia and Iran have collaborated” throughout the original talks to weaken the U.S. negotiating position.
“The old line of the axis of evil, I think this is the axis of evil today,” Engel said in 2017. “And we have to confront it.”
Russia’s open invasion of Ukraine has triggered a cascade of Western sanctions and prompted the United States and its allies to send lethal weapons to Ukrainians to fend off the attack, but Ulyanov said this crisis has not affected the talks.
“Iran and Ukraine, on the international agenda, are existing in different dimensions,” he told reporters.
Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Menendez warned Biden last month not to allow Iran to “threaten us into a bad deal” and has insisted that the U.S. refuse to renew the 2015 deal unless Iranian officials answer questions about nuclear material detected at undeclared sites. The IAEA has been demanding answers for years, but IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi confirmed this week that the stonewalling has continued as Iranian officials attempt to use the Vienna talks as leverage to close his investigation.
“These are distinct processes, although there is obviously mutual influence, but for us to be able to solve these issues, what we need is an integral and very substantive process,” Grossi told reporters Wednesday. “I’m optimistic that we will be able to do that without any politicization of the issue or making it contingent or depending [on] the closing, hopefully, of the JCPOA negotiations. So we have to continue our own work.”
A senior European Union official cautioned Thursday that the talks, however close to the “finish line,” have not concluded.
“We are at the final stages,” the EU’s Enrique Mora tweeted. “Some relevant issues are still open and success is never guaranteed in such a complex negotiation. Doing our best in the coordinator’s team. But we are definitely not there yet.”
Ulyanov is talking to Iranian officials about how to clear any final impediments. “A very useful meeting this evening with the chief Iranian negotiator Dr. Ali Bagheri Kani,” he tweeted Thursday. “We discussed what else needs to be done to finalize the Vienna talks on JCPOA.”
