#Iran #eased #calls #nuclear #deal
The United States said Tuesday that Iran had agreed to ease key demands that had held up the revival of a 2015 nuclear deal, with all eyes on what President Joe Biden is offering in turn.
The United States is expected to respond shortly to Iran through European Union mediators, after a year and a half of indirect diplomacy that seemed on the brink of collapse just a few weeks ago.
US officials said Iran dropped its demands to block some UN nuclear inspections after it also insisted on a key sticking point – that Washington should remove its powerful Revolutionary Guards from a terrorism blacklist.
“Gaps remain, but should we reach an agreement to return to the deal, Iran would need to take many significant steps to dismantle its nuclear program,” said a senior Biden administration official.
Biden has backed a return to the deal destroyed by former President Donald Trump, and Iran has pressed hard at the Vienna negotiations. But the official insisted that Iran ultimately “made concessions on critical issues.”
Iran had attempted to hire an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) probe at three undeclared nuclear sites where the watchdog says it has questions related to nuclear work that has now ended.
In June, Iran shut down a number of IAEA cameras after the executive board of the UN body chided Tehran for failing to adequately explain past traces of uranium.
The senior US official said Iran had agreed to surveillance “indefinitely”.
“In addition to the nuclear restrictions Iran would need to implement, the IAEA would again be able to implement the most comprehensive inspection regime ever negotiated, which would allow it to uncover any Iranian effort to covertly search for a nuclear weapon,” the official said .
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told Spanish public television TVE that Iran had requested adjustments to a draft deal put forward by the bloc in early August and that “most” countries had agreed.
Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia are also parties to the agreement, formerly known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
– ‘Hard compromises’ inevitable –
The US official insisted reports of fresh compromises by the Biden administration were “categorically false”.
But Suzanne DiMaggio, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said both sides had to show flexibility to get as far as they could.
“Neither side will want to admit that, but the reality is that in a high-stakes negotiation, especially between adversaries, hard compromises are the only way to reach an agreement,” she said.
“If both sides are confident that they can classify the result as a win, chances are the JCPOA will be restored. If not, the road ahead looks rocky.”
She said Biden is in a strong position after legislative victories and has incentive to avoid a nuclear crisis with Iran given high tensions with Russia and China.
However, Biden faces fierce opposition from Trump’s Republican Party and Israel, which fought the deal when it was struck under former President Barack Obama.
Trump imposed sweeping sanctions on Iran in hopes of bringing the US adversary to its knees. Its economy suffered, but the Biden administration claims the main result has been the acceleration of Iran’s nuclear work.
In a letter to Biden, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee complained that the administration had kept Congress in the dark.
“Members of Congress have expressed widespread concern about the national security implications of the nuclear talks, including regarding the Iranian regime’s chilling plots to assassinate American citizens on US soil,” wrote Rep. Mike McCaul.
An EU official earlier said Iran had agreed to postpone discussion of ending Trump’s terrorist blacklist of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the clerical regime’s elite ideological unit.
Among the ideas reportedly being considered is that the United States retain the terrorist designation but not penalize deals with the Revolutionary Guards, which have wide-ranging interests in Iran’s economy.
The United States’ return to the deal would mean an end to Trump’s unilateral sanctions on Iran, which sells its oil, and potentially further reduce energy prices, which had skyrocketed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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