As the West continues to review Iran's latest response to the new draft nuclear deal, it appears that despite the text being considered final, the talks are essentially still ongoing over the various provisions and that Iran has all but secured major concessions.
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Israel Hayom has learned of the various concessions that the US has already been willing to accept as part of a revived nuclear deal. The concessions, some of which have been previously reported, were elaborated upon in a recent article called "Five Minutes from Disaster" by Richard Goldberg in The Dispatch, which also includes what are apparently new demands by Iran.
"Under a new deal, Iran would receive $275 billion of sanctions relief in the first year and $1 trillion by 2030, including the lifting of US terrorism sanctions imposed on the top financiers of a group President Joe Biden recently reaffirmed as a terrorist organization: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)," Goldberg writes on the economic gains Iran has apparently secured through the talks.
The concessions also do away with one of the key elements of the original deal: keeping Iran at least one year away from the bomb should it choose to pursue it. The original deal was made while Iran was still far away from having enough enriched material, but now, if the deal's text remains intact, its starting point would be much farther ahead and would see virtually no restrictions on its nuclear program by 2031, when the main restrictions expire.
"Tehran would face no changes in the old deal's sunset clauses – that is, expiration dates on key restrictions – and would be allowed to keep its newly deployed arsenal of advanced uranium centrifuges in storage, guaranteeing the regime the ability to cross the nuclear threshold at any time of its choosing. As with the 2015 agreement, Iran would face no restrictions on its development of nuclear-capable missiles…"
The deal, if the concessions are finalized into the text, would also allow Russia to win major construction bids worth billions of dollars in Iran to construct new nuclear reactors without facing the Western sanctions over the war in Ukraine.
"Moscow, meanwhile, would receive billions of dollars to construct additional nuclear power plants in Iran, and potentially more for storage of nuclear material. The fate of US sanctions blocking the transfer of Russian arms to Iran remains unknown, despite US Defense Department reports attesting to Tehran's interest in buying fighter aircraft, main battle tanks, air defense systems, and coastal defense systems from Moscow," the article reads.
Just recently, Iran has asked to add more concessions, although it is unclear what the response has been. One of these proposed concessions was designed to overcome the US objection to removing the IRGC from the State Department's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO).
"Last month, ahead of nuclear talks in Doha, Tehran floated a compromise [to the FTO issue]: remove U.S. terrorism sanctions from the IRGC's largest business conglomerate, Khatam al-Anbiya. Unlike the IRGC designation, the American side did not publicly reject this direct sanctions relief request for the IRGC," the author noted. Iran further insisted that the various probes on suspicious nuclear activity, carried out independently by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regardless of the status of the nuclear deal, would be closed. If such a demand were to be accepted (and such a concession was reportedly included in the latest EU-submitted draft), this would further undermine the IAEA and will be a de-facto acceptance of Iran's illicit nuclear activities.
"Possibly pocketing yet another victory, Iran came to Austria with a new ultimatum: It would not accept any deal unless the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) shuts down its nearly four-year-old investigation into secret nuclear sites and materials never disclosed by Iran to the agency. Tehran, of course, was supposed to come clean about its past work on nuclear weapons as a pre-condition for the JCPOA in 2015, but the deal established an artificial deadline for a perfunctory IAEA report to clear the JCPOA's path forward – turning a blind eye to Iranian deception. In 2018, however, Israel discovered Iran was hiding a nuclear weapons archive – a library of the regime's work to build nuclear weapons with memos indicating Iran planned to return to weaponization in the future," Goldberg writes, adding, "To shut down this probe – turning a blind eye to Tehran's violation of the NPT – would guarantee that Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons remains unchanged. It would also render any nuclear deal complete folly. Such an accord may purport to provide robust verification of Iran's nuclear program, but would lack the ability to verify the clandestine aspects of the regime's activities," the author writes, calling this "acceptance of clandestine nuclear activities inside Iran."
Iran has further insisted that the new deal would bind future US administrations and prevent President Joe Biden's successors from pulling out of the deal like Donald Trump did. This will be done, according to Iran, by securing various economic guarantees. This has been a longstanding demand that the US has refused to accept, but there appears to be progress toward a compromise.
Another demand that Iran has implicitly made according to the article and various reports is that the US forgo any action against Iran to punish it for the plots to assassinate members of the Trump administration whom Iran blames for the assassination of Qassem Soleimani in 2020, who was then the head of the IRGC Qods Force.
According to Golberg, a new nuclear deal would cement this into reality, albeit not officially. "Iran would win all these concessions while actively plotting to assassinate former US officials like John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and Pompeo adviser Brian Hook, and trying to kidnap and kill Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad on U.S. soil," he writes
Professor Jacob Nagel, who served as the acting head of Israel's National Security Council and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, reacted to the apparent concessions, telling Israel Hayom that "without going into detail, I can tell you with certainty, just like what my colleague Richard Goldberg has written, we are five minutes from disaster when it comes to the ongoing talks between the West and Iran."
Nagel added, "The US, the Europeans, and possibly the IAEA keep being humiliated, and even as Iran continues to spit on their face they call it rain. The Europeans have already twice before said that the draft is the final text, saying it is 'Take it or leave it.' Even the latest deadline of Aug. 15 has come and gone."
According to Nagel, "It appears that what is actually unfolding is that Iran keeps extorting the West while the Russians and Chinese watch from the sidelines and enjoy every moment. The US red lines set by the Europeans and Americans have been breached a long time ago, but even so, they continue to engage Iran on future rounds of talks in order to discuss Tehran's absurd new demands."
Nagel concluded by saying, "The bottom line is that the US and the Europeans continue to grant Iran more concessions while the Iranians have all but stayed in the same position. The JCPOA from 2015 was dangerous and terrible but the emerging deal is much much worse, even if you ignore the time that has gone by since then and the little time that remains until the sunset clauses expire."
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