Iran's foreign minister said on Saturday that a US move to restore sanctions waivers to Tehran was not enough and Washington should provide guarantees for the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal with major powers.
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"The lifting of some sanctions can in itself translate into good faith," Hossein Amirabdollahian said in comments reported by Iranian media. "While what is on paper is good, but it's not enough," he said
President Joe Biden's administration on Friday restored sanctions waivers to Iran to allow international civilian nuclear cooperation projects, as indirect American-Iranian talks on reviving the 2015 international nuclear deal with Tehran enter the final stretch.
The waivers had allowed Russian, Chinese, and European companies to carry out non-proliferation work to effectively make it harder for Iranian nuclear sites to be used for weapons development. The waivers were rescinded by the United States in 2019 and 2020 under former US President Donald Trump, who pulled out of the nuclear agreement.
Amirabdollahian said one of the major issues in the Vienna talks was getting "guarantees, especially from the West, to fulfill their obligations."
"We demand guarantees in the political, legal, and economic spheres. Certain agreements have already been reached," he added.
"Good will, in our viewpoint, means that something tangible happens on the ground," Amirabdollahian said.
Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said in a post on Twitter on Saturday: "Iran's legal right to continue research and development and maintain its peaceful nuclear capabilities and achievements, side by side with its security .... cannot be curbed by any agreement."
The US State Department sent a report signed by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Congress explaining that restoring the waivers would help the talks in Vienna on returning to the deal reached between Iran and a group of countries including China, France, Germany, Russia, Britain, and the United States. The agreement is formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
"The waiver with respect to these activities is designed to facilitate discussions that would help to close a deal on a mutual return to full implementation of the JCPOA and lay the groundwork for Iran's return to [the] performance of its JCPOA commitments," according to the report.
"It is also designed to serve US non-proliferation and nuclear safety interests and constrain Iran's nuclear activities. It is being issued as a matter of policy discretion with these objectives in mind, and not pursuant to a commitment or as part of a quid pro quo," the report said.
The activities, according to the report, include the redesign of Iran's Arak heavy-water reactor, the preparation and modification of its Fordow facility for stable isotope production, and operations, training, and services related to its Bushehr nuclear power plant, among several other things.
The waivers permit foreign countries and companies to work on civilian projects at Iran's Bushehr nuclear power station, its Arak heavy water plant, and the Tehran Research Reactor. Pompeo had revoked the waivers in May 2020, accusing Iran of "nuclear extortion" for continuing and expanding work at the sites.
"We did NOT provide sanctions relief for Iran and WILL NOT until/unless Tehran returns to its commitments under the JCPOA," State Department spokesman Ned Price tweeted, using the acronym for the official name of the nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
"We did precisely what the last administration did: permit our international partners to address growing nuclear nonproliferation and safety risks in Iran," Price said.
The Trump administration had grudgingly approved the waivers, which apply to Chinese, Russian, and European companies, even after withdrawing from the deal. But that ended when former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rescinded them in May 2020.
The United States and Iran have held eight rounds of indirect talks in Vienna since April aimed at reinstating the pact that lifted sanctions against Tehran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program. There has been no formal announcement on when the ninth round would start, but expectations intensified that it could be next week.
The latest talks in Vienna were "among the most intensive that we had to date," a US official told reporters on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The official added that there has been some progress in narrowing down the list of differences and that now is the time for political decisions.
The waiver was needed to allow for technical discussions that were key to the talks about a return to the deal, said a senior State Department official, also speaking on condition of anonymity. The official added that restoring the waiver was not a signal that the United States was on the verge of reaching an understanding to return to the deal.
Eurasia Group analyst Henry Rome said the restoration of the waiver is a "modest sign" of movement.
"The waivers are less a goodwill gesture or a concession to Iran, but rather technical steps that are probably aimed at ensuring implementation discussions can go forward in Vienna," Rome said.
Iran says it is not respecting the terms of the deal because the US pulled out of it first. Iran has demanded the restoration of all sanctions relief it was promised under the deal to return to compliance.
The Trump administration had ended the so-called "civ-nuke" waivers in May 2020 as part of its "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran that began when Trump withdrew the US from the deal in 2018, complaining that it was the worst diplomatic agreement ever negotiated and gave Iran a pathway to developing the bomb.
Three members of the US team negotiating a return to the Iran nuclear deal recently stepped down in protest over the Biden administration's conciliatory approach toward the Islamic republic.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, US officials confirmed that Richard Nephew, the deputy special envoy for Iran, had left the team.
Nephew, an architect of previous economic sanctions on Iran, had "advocated a tougher posture in the current negotiations, and he hasn't attended the talks in Vienna since early December," the report said.
Two other members of the team, which is headed by State Department veteran and Special Iran Envoy Robert Malley, have also removed themselves from the talks because they also "wanted a harder negotiating stance," according to the WSJ.
Among the issues that have divided the negotiating team, the report added, are how firmly to enforce existing sanctions and whether to sever negotiations as Iran drags them out while advancing its nuclear program.
Critics of the nuclear deal who lobbied Trump to withdraw from it protested, arguing that even if the Biden administration wants to return to the 2015 deal it should at least demand some concessions from Iran before upfront granting it sanctions relief.
"From a negotiating perspective, they look desperate: we'll waive sanctions before we even have a deal, just say yes to anything!" said Rich Goldberg, a vocal deal opponent who is a senior adviser to the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
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