U.S. and Iranian officials have resumed their uncertain and climactic “indirect talks” in Vienna, with Western allies eager for a deal that would halt the regime’s burgeoning nuclear program while American lawmakers worry that President Joe Biden will agree to a “bad deal.”
No one is quite sure what will happen next.
“Hand on the heart, it’s very very difficult for me or indeed, I think, anyone else to predict,” British Foreign Office minister James Cleverly, the United Kingdom’s lead for the Middle East and North America, told reporters Monday. “The proposals that we put forward are very fair. And it is demonstrably in Iran’s best interest to engage with them and not pursue nuclear weapons any further. Are they gonna take this up? I really hope so.”
A failure would test the trans-Atlantic determination to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon in the absence of an obvious diplomatic plan. Iranian officials have continued to stockpile nuclear weapons-related material over the last year while refusing for months at a time even to participate in negotiations.
“Iran’s levels of enrichment are now higher than they have ever been. Their breakout times are shorter than they’ve ever been,” Cleverly said. “And, from our point of view, we can’t allow these talks just drag out whilst Iran continues its enrichment program. So we’ve made it clear that this needs to be resolved and needs to be resolved soon.”
SENATE DEMOCRAT FEARS IRAN IS SCARING BIDEN ‘INTO A BAD DEAL’ ON NUCLEAR PROGRAM
A senior Russian official insisted that the negotiating teams are on the cusp of a major resolution. “We are five minutes away from the finish line,” Russian Ambassador Mikhail Ulyanov said in a Russian media interview published Monday. “A draft of the final document has been crafted. There are several points there that need more work, but that document is already on the table.”
And yet, the trajectory of the negotiations to date prompted one of the top Senate Democrats has urged President Joe Biden to scrap the talks and renew intense international sanctions, and Senate Republicans warned that they can scuttle any agreement that fails to impose what they consider to be adequate restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program.
“Any agreement related to Iran’s nuclear program which is not a treaty ratified by the Senate is subject to being reversed, and indeed will likely be torn up, in the opening days of the next Presidential administration, as early as January 2025,” Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, wrote in a Monday letter signed by 32 GOP members. “That timeline is roughly as long as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) survived implementation, and potentially even shorter.”
That pointed message stokes one of Iran’s chief complaints over the last year of negotiations, as Tehran wants “guarantees” that a future president won’t follow the precedent set by Donald Trump by exiting the deal after Biden leaves office.
“The lifting of some sanctions can in itself translate into good faith,” Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said Saturday. “We demand guarantees in the political, legal and economic spheres. Certain agreements have already been reached.”
Cruz asserted congressional authority to hold a vote on “any agreement related to the nuclear program with Iran, as well as all related documents and side deals,” pursuant to the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 — a law that Congress passed to have the option of voting down the Iran deal despite President Barack Obama’s decision not to submit it for ratification as a treaty.
“We are committed to using the full range of options and leverage available to United States Senators to ensure that you meet those obligations, and that the implementation of any agreement will be severely if not terminally hampered if you do not,” Cruz and the other Senate Republicans wrote to Biden.
In parallel, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett signaled that his government will reserve the right to take military action against Iran if necessary, a principle that Biden endorsed Saturday in a phone call with the Israeli leader.
“He made it explicitly clear, that Israel will maintain its freedom of action in every situation,” Bennett said Monday. “It is extremely important. We will maintain our freedom of action without any connection to what will be, with or without an agreement.”
In any case, Western officials hope that Iranian leaders feel enough economic pressure under the current sanctions regime to return to the 2015 pact, even in the face of Republican opposition.
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“There will inevitably have to be a reaction if [the Iranians] don’t engage with this,” Cleverly, the British official, told reporters. “The sanctions that are already in place we know [are] having a detrimental effect on Iran’s economy. It doesn’t need to be like that. And it’s entirely in their gift, entirely in their gift, to resolve this. And they could and they should.”
