In full tension over compliance with the Iranian Nuclear Pact, the President of the United States offered Tehran to resume talks on the subject. Donald Trump withdrew in 2018 from the agreement reached by five superpowers in 2015.
In 2018, Donald Trump made his most risky move in foreign policy, dealt a fatal blow to the nuclear pact with Iran, reached in 2015 by Germany, China, France, the United Kingdom, the United States and Russia. In just eleven minutes, the former US president ended more than two and a half years of arduous negotiations.
Last Thursday, the new US president, Joe Biden, officially offered Iran to resume talks on the nuclear issue.
What is the Biden ad?
The government of United States President Joe Biden has formally offered to resume nuclear negotiations with Iran, television network CNN and the newspaper reported Thursday. The New York Times
According to the newspaper, quoting a statement from the State Department, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to European foreign ministers and pointed out that the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, from which former President Donald Trump withdrew the US. important achievement of multilateral diplomacy. Since arriving at the White House on January 20, Biden had insisted that Iran respect the boundaries of the agreement to consider reversing Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement.
You may be interested: what happened to the nuclear deal with Iran?
The JCPOA, signed in 2015 between Iran and six major powers (the US, Russia, China, France, the UK and Germany), has weakened significantly since Donald Trump’s US administration decided to withdraw his country in 2018. And again impose sanctions on Tehran.
In response, Iran began to gradually reduce its commitments and recently began producing 20% enriched uranium and metallic uranium in violation of the pact. The next step, scheduled for February 21, was the suspension of the so-called additional protocol, which allows inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to visit an Iranian civil or military nuclear facility without prior notice.
What is the position of the US?
“Total respect in exchange for total respect”: This is how the Democrat summarizes his conditional return to the 2015 agreement that should prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
In other words, he is ready to re-sign the agreement, lifting the draconian sanctions of his Republican predecessor. But only when Tehran takes back the nuclear restrictions foreseen in the text.
However, the Islamic Republic, which has come to ignore these pledges in response to US sanctions, is demanding that Washington lift all of these punitive measures first.
Why the ad now?
Time played against the deal, as they had issued an ultimatum to re-enrich uranium, according to Iranian authorities, beyond the limits set in the nuclear pact. “We hope these errors will be corrected as soon as possible and that the new US administration will submit to the law and resolution 2231” validating the nuclear pact, known as JCPOA in the English acronym, “said Hasan Rohaní, Iran’s president. .
You may be interested: Iran is increasingly deviating from the nuclear agreement
The Iranian president also indicated in a telephone conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel that Iran is not willing to accept changes to the agreement, as the US and European parties have suggested adding other contentious issues, such as the Persian ballistic program. missiles.
“The only way to enforce the agreement is to lift the inhumane and illegal sanctions of the United States and return that country to the pact,” he said.
To calm the spirits and convince the Iranian government not to limit international inspections to its nuclear facilities, IAEA director, Argentine Rafael Grossi, will travel to Iran next Saturday.
What has Iran stopped doing?
“Most of the violations” of the deal by Iran so far, especially in uranium enrichment, “can be quickly reversed,” said Kelsey Davenport of the Arms Control Association. Several experts suggest a period of less than three months.
But the violations Iran has planned in the coming months are more serious “and” more difficult to reverse, “Davenport warns. Starting with inspections, because “any loss of access” to Iranian sites will “fuel speculation about Iran’s illegal activities.”
And in June, Iran’s elections could also complicate matters if the hardliners win.
February 21 is fast approaching and “it is imperative that diplomacy gets underway”, a former European Union (EU) diplomat has been alarmed. “The point is to make sure that this threshold is not exceeded”, agrees a European source, stressing that it would also be a “red line for Russia and China”.
Jon Wolfsthal, who advised Biden on these issues while he was vice president, assures that the United States and Iran are “considering a statement before the 21st showing their mutual intention to return to respect the agreement.”
Call Biden and Netanyahu
This week, Iran was the focus of the first conversation between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and new US President Joe Biden.
You may be interested: Iran nuclear deal, a treaty on the way to failure
Biden’s delay in contacting Netanyahu, who had a good relationship with his predecessor Donald Trump, has been criticized by the Israeli press and several Republican congressmen in Washington.
“The conversation was warm, friendly and lasted about an hour,” Netanyahu said on Twitter, specifying that the two leaders had discussed issues such as the Middle East peace deals, the “Iranian threat” and the management of the pandemic. COVID-19. “Good conversation,” Biden summarized in the Oval Office.
The two leaders stressed the “importance of close consultations on regional security issues, especially Iran,” said the White House, without mentioning the dire deal on Tehran’s nuclear program.
Biden reaffirmed US support for the recent normalization of relations between Israel and various countries in the Arab world. The United Arab Emirates announced the restoration of relations with the Hebrew country in August, a decision that followed later in Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.
Europe and the deal
The other European powers participating in the nuclear deal urged the US to take the step to address the issue with Iran. They also asked Tehran to meet its uranium enrichment obligations and not limit international inspections to its nuclear facilities.
You may be interested: what’s left of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal?
Their four-party meeting served to warn Iran that reducing cooperation with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors would be “dangerous,” so they called on that country to consider the impact of a measure that “so serious “. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian hosted the Paris meeting of his British counterparts, Dominic Raab, and German Heiko Maas, while US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, telematically participated.
The four Western powers reaffirmed their goal of “seeing Iran return to fully fulfilling its obligations” under the 2015 agreement framing Iran’s nuclear program, according to a joint statement released after the meeting.
The officials stressed their common interest in “maintaining the nuclear non-proliferation regime and ensuring that Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon,” the note said.
France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States also expressed “common concerns” about Iran’s recent decision to produce 20% enriched uranium and metallic uranium, which is an “important step in the development of a nuclear weapon”.
“Secretary of State Blinken recalled that, as President (US Joe) Biden had said, if Iran again strictly fulfills its obligations (…), the United States would do the same and were ready to start talks with Iran to achieve this.”