Iran could “trigger a serious crisis” in the near future if a last-ditch effort to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal fails, according to a senior French official.
“Political decisions are needed from the Iranians,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told French lawmakers on Wednesday. “Either they trigger a serious crisis in the coming days, or they accept the agreement which respects the interests of all parties.”
Le Drian emphasized that the negotiation has reached the “tipping point” as Iranian officials hesitate to agree to a proposal that already has splintered Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s negotiating team and prominent congressional Democrats. Iranian officials maintain that they need additional assurances from the United States that a future president will not withdraw from a rehabilitated nuclear deal, and they want President Joe Biden to reverse the terrorism-related sanctions imposed by former President Donald Trump’s administration.
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“As a matter of principle, public opinion in Iran cannot accept as a guarantee the words of a head of state, let alone the United States, due to the withdrawal of Americans from the JCPOA,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told the Financial Times in an interview published Wednesday, adding that Congress should “declare in the form of a political statement their commitment to the agreement.”
The Biden administration, however, has struggled to maintain even internal unity about the deal, as State Department special envoy for Iran Robert Malley’s top deputy quit the administration in recent weeks.
“I departed the U.S. Iran team on 6 December due to a sincere difference of opinion concerning policy,” outgoing deputy special envoy Richard Nephew wrote Tuesday on Twitter. I departed the State Department last week. … It was a privilege to serve in the U.S. government again and for the Biden Administration specifically. I would be honored if considered for another role in government in the future but intend to return to academia.”
Nephew declined to elaborate on the cause of his departure, but Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, warned U.S. officials not to “allow Iran to threaten us into a bad deal or an interim agreement that allows it to continue to build its nuclear capacity” in a floor speech that saw him call for an intensification of international sanctions on the regime.
Amir-Abdollahian, for his part, complained that the U.S. “lacks a serious initiative” for a return to compliance with the deal, adding that Iran wants Biden to lift all the sanctions that Trump imposed — even those unrelated to the 2015 nuclear deal.
“That Trump unilaterally and unjustly imposed sanctions on real and legal entities in Iran under some allegations as Iran’s missile program, regional issues or human rights is not acceptable,” the Iranian official told FT. “This is also one of the challenges which remains on the negotiating table in Vienna.”
Menendez, in his Feb. 2 floor speech, warned that “Iran’s breakout time is now a mere three to four weeks.” Le Drian, the French foreign minister, underscored that the regime’s nuclear progress could render the 2015 deal obsolete within “a matter of days.”
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“We are coming to the moment of truth,” he said. “If we want Iran to respect its nonproliferation commitments and in exchange for the United States to lift sanctions, there has to be something left to do it.”
