Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s team is “disappointed” in Iran’s refusal to discuss the rehabilitation of the 2015 nuclear deal, as Tehran is deriding President Biden’s diplomatic concessions while demanding economic relief in advance of any talks.
“We are disappointed at Iran’s response, but we remain ready to re-engage in meaningful diplomacy to achieve a mutual return to compliance” with the nuclear accord, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters Monday.
Iranian officials issued their rebuff of Biden’s overture to coincide with a brewing dispute between Tehran and the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency. The regime has been hiding nuclear activity at multiple secret sites, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency chief. Yet Iranian officials believe they can compel Biden to ease the economic pressure on the regime, despite a lack of concessions by Tehran.
“I am certain that the world and the United States will have to kneel before this great nation’s will and lift unjust sanctions,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Monday, per state media.
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That’s a defiant response to the Biden administration’s bid to restart negotiations that the administration hopes will lead both governments back into compliance with the Iran nuclear deal. Blinken’s team reversed a series of Trump administration policies that touch on Iran.
The team renounced then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s bid to renew unilaterally the international sanctions that were lifted when the 2015 nuclear deal went into effect, for instance, and loosened the restrictions on Iranian diplomats working at the U.N. Blinken’s team also removed an Iranian proxy in Yemen from the foreign terrorist organization blacklist, citing the degree to which the terrorism label interfered with humanitarian aid work in the country.
“These are not concessions to Iran. These are concessions for common sense, talking to Iran to try to resolve the nuclear issue,” a senior State Department official said last month. “I think we’ve seen what four years of maximum pressure and not talking to Iran have yielded: an accelerated Iranian nuclear program and a more aggressive Iranian posture in the region. And removing gratuitous counterproductive obstacles to diplomacy are not in the U.S. interest either.”
Rouhani has turned the new U.S. administration’s analysis of the Trump team’s approach into an emboldening message. “Thanks to steadfastness of our nation, those who imposed these sanctions on us now confess that sanctions and pressure have been to no avail,” he said.
In parallel, Iranian officials have been caught handling nuclear material at a secret site, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said Monday.
“After 18 months, Iran has not provided the necessary, full and technically credible explanation for the presence of these particles,” Grossi told the 35 nations that comprise the U.N. nuclear watchdog’s Board of Governors. “In the absence of a technically credible explanation from Iran, the Agency is deeply concerned that undeclared nuclear material may have been present at this undeclared location and that such nuclear material remains unreported by Iran under its Safeguards Agreement.”
The Safeguards Agreement is linked to the Nonproliferation Treaty, a foundational arms control pact. While European officials have tolerated some breaches of the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, they have a history of rebuking Tehran when the regime tries to curtail the IAEA oversight authorized by the arms control agreements that stand independent of the JCPOA.
Grossi made clear that the regime’s secrecy extends beyond that one site. “With regard to three other locations, none of which was declared to the agency, Iran has not answered any of the agency’s questions relating to the possible presence at these locations of nuclear material,” he said. European officials are working on a new resolution to condemn Iran’s recent moves to restrict IAEA access, but Iranian officials are trying to kill that resolution by threatening to curtail inspections even further.
“If the Board of Governors adopts a resolution against Iran, we will show an appropriate reaction,” Iranian Atomic Energy Organization chief Ali Akbar Salehi said, per state media.
Iranian officials are drawing support from Russia, which is lobbying against the European push for a new rebuke on the grounds that Iran might refuse to begin nuclear talks.
“It will hugely complicate those efforts undermining the prospects for the restoration of the JCPOA and for normal cooperation between Iran and the Agency,” Russian officials wrote in a position first reported by Reuters.
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U.S. officials still say that the impasse won’t be broken until Iran agrees to begin talks. “We are concerned that Iran is moving further away from compliance with its nuclear commitments,” Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the top American diplomat to the U.N., told reporters.
“We also have said that we would be willing to attend a meeting convened by the European Union to work toward that end, and we hope that Iran will do the same,” she said. “So that’s the next step in this process.”
