Sanctions ‘artist’ leaves Iran nuclear team after pressing for tougher stance

Nephew pushed for a tougher stance in the negotiations with Tehran before leaving the team, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Two other team members left for the same reason.

NBC News reported a disagreement between Nephew and Malley, U.S. special representative for Iran, over the direction of the talks.

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A State Department spokesperson confirmed Nephew’s move but declined to comment on internal policy discussions.

The Trump administration’s exit from the deal, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, left the White House in a crisis, the official said. “Working our way out of this crisis requires many difficult, closely balanced decisions, on which there can be reasonable disagreement.”

Both the Biden administration and Tehran have said they want the 2015 agreement restored, but negotiations have proven fraught with Iranian hard-liners replacing more moderate officials in an election last year. 

The State Department official said the administration’s senior-most levels had decided the current policy after careful consideration of multiple viewpoints, which officials view as the best path to curbing Iran’s nuclear aspirations.

“The president’s priority is mutual return to full implementation of the JCPOA,” this person added. “Special Envoy Malley and his team are diligently and professionally executing that policy.”

Indirect talks between Iran and the U.S. resumed late last year, despite Tehran’s adoption of a tougher stance and its refusal to cooperate with international nuclear site inspectors.

The decision over whether to pursue action at the International Atomic Energy Agency board to censure Iran was another point of friction among the team, the Wall Street Journal reported. 

The U.S. has declined to provide a time frame for when it might shift strategies.

The approach has also vexed some career officials. Two State Department employees serving as staff to the negotiating team stepped away from their roles last year, frustrated by the policy direction, a former Trump administration official told the Washington Examiner. Malley, who has been viewed at times as something of a lightning rod on issues in the region, was not a factor in those decisions.

The departures come at a crucial phase in the talks, with the United States and European allies warning that time is running out to salvage the 2015 pact as Tehran races to gain nuclear expertise, shortening the time it could take to build a bomb. Under the deal, the U.S. lifted most international sanctions on Iran in exchange for temporary limits on Iran’s nuclear advances. The Trump administration exited the agreement in 2018, arguing that it had proven insufficient in restricting Iran.

Biden and top administration officials, along with the UK, France, and Germany, have said that that Iran’s nuclear advances will soon make a return to the full implementation of the deal impossible. “[B]ut that point has not yet been reached point, and until we do, were are going to continue urgent negotiations to get back into the JCPOA,” the State Department official said.

Analysts have said the longer Tehran remains outside of a deal, the less likely a return to the original pact becomes.

“The advances Iran has made in its nuclear program since 2019, and especially over the past year, mean that the [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] exists as little more than a theoretical construct at the moment,” Naysan Rafati, senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, said as the group released a report detailing months of failed talks.

“That means that negotiators gathered in Vienna right now are facing a Humpty Dumpty moment where, within perhaps a matter of weeks, the existing agreement can no longer be put back together,” Rafati added. “If that comes to pass, all sides are going to be eyeing their respective plan B’s, with implications for nonproliferation, the region, and Iran’s domestic dynamics.”

Some officials argued for leaving the talks in December after a new Iranian negotiating team from the hard-line government of President Ebrahim Raisi returned to Vienna and walked back previous concessions, sources told the Wall Street Journal.

Another point of discord was how strongly to enforce current sanctions on Iran, an effort that may have increased tensions with China over its imports of Iranian oil.

Nephew helped design the web of sanctions imposed in the years leading up to the JCPOA, which are credited with helping bring Iran’s leaders to the negotiating table. His 2017 book, The Art of Sanctions, argues their case.

Trump reimposed those sanctions as part of his Maximum Pressure campaign, and imposed his own as well.

Nephew’s appointment to Biden’s negotiating team sparked criticism in Iran, where he was digitally added to a movie poster for a film titled The Devil’s Advocate in which a lawyer serves as a counsel to Satan. The Vatan-e Emrooz newspaper used the image on its front page.

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The Biden administration has sought to downplay Nephew’s departure from the team, with a State Department spokesperson calling personnel moves “very common” at the one-year mark.

But it has stoked concerns among outside experts who view the administration’s efforts skeptically.

“Is the Biden administration trying to recreate an Obama legacy and trying to revive that, or is it trying to come up with a sustainable and durable Iran policy for the United States? It’s the latter which is critical,” said Jason Brodsky, policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran. “The former — the reality is that that ship has sailed. We’re in 2022, and the reality today is much, much different from when that agreement was inked.”