President Biden agreed to scuttle a resolution denouncing Iran’s secret nuclear research, as three European allies dropped a planned confrontation in another attempt to facilitate talks to rehabilitate the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran.
“The E3 decided, with the full support of the United States, that the best way to support the at the [International Atomic Energy Agency’s] process was to refrain from putting forward the draft resolution,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters Thursday. “We are pleased with the outcome of the IAEA Board of Governors meeting with respect to Iran.”
The United Nations watchdog’s quarterly meeting began Monday with a bang, as IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi declared himself “deeply concerned that undeclared nuclear material may have been present at [an] undeclared location.”
That announcement spurred European officials to draft a new censure of Tehran, as Russia and China warned any rebuke would jeopardize the hoped-for nuclear talks — only for Grossi to alleviate the pressure Thursday with word of a new plan for “technical” discussions with Iran about the regime’s secret sites.
“It is obvious for everybody that all these matters need to have some resolution,” Grossi told reporters in Vienna. “And when it comes to Iran — and I’m not saying anything that Iran itself has not said — everything is interconnected, of course.”
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China hailed the dropping of the resolution as an “opportunity … to create favorable conditions” for negotiations over the U.S. and Iranian return to compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal. And European powers regard the drafting and withdrawal of the resolution as a gambit that induced Iran to send “positive signals” about the negotiations.
“We think that the discussions at the IAEA were a tough stance to push them a bit and the fact that we dropped the resolution and we gave them a new chance of coming back,” a European official said. “They sent a positive signal and my take is that they want to discuss the agenda before saying yes or no.”
Iranian officials, dating back to former President Donald Trump’s tenure, have hesitated to meet with U.S. officials unless they could be confident about obtaining sanctions relief in the discussions.
“There were a lot of brokered talks … trying to bring the Iranians to have discussions in exchange for short-term sanctions relief,” recalled former White House National Security Council official Rich Goldberg, now a senior adviser at Foundations for Defense of Democracies. “So it would make sense if that is still what the Europeans are floating and what the Iranians are floating.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s team has walked a tightrope when discussing the matter publicly.
“Iran should not be waiting for anything because we have stated very clearly that what we are prepared to do is to engage in constructive dialogue,” Price told reporters. “I know that various proposals and ideas have been put forward from various capitals. The proposal that we have put forward … is to take part in principled, clear-eyed, constructive negotiations in the context of the P5+1 with the Iranians, where we can discuss the very issues that might be at play.”
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Goldberg, one of the top U.S. officials for countering Iran’s nuclear program during Trump’s presidency, cautioned that Iranian officials might regard the fight over the IAEA resolution as proof that U.S. and European officials flinch when they threaten additional nuclear provocations.
“It is unconscionable for the Board of Governors of the IAEA to leave their quarterly board meeting without passing a resolution … while Iran is, by the statements of the director general, concealing undeclared nuclear material and sites,” he said. “They’re likely to meet at some point. The Iranians need money. They’re just holding out to see how good of a negotiating position the Europeans and the Biden administration want to put them in.”
