Iran nuclear deal close but hardliners dig in

The fate of the Iran nuclear deal was in the balance last night after Iranian officials sent out conflicting messages about the likelihood Tehran would accept America’s conditions.

Western diplomats say the text outlining how to return to the 2015 deal torn up by President Trump has now been tabled, and they are optimistic it can be agreed by the end of the week.

However, the text, said to be 20 pages long, does not meet all of Iran’s demands and a final decision will be taken by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, told the Munich Security Conference yesterday that the “window was open” and “we are close to a deal”.

However, he continued to demand statements from the US that it would commit to the deal beyond President Biden’s presidency, and asked for goodwill gestures such as the release of assets frozen by sanctions.

Meanwhile, Iran’s parliament published a letter to President Raisi demanding that a deal should not be signed unless all Iran’s initial demands were met — something that even Abdollahian accepted was not going to happen. Parliament has no say over the deal, but the letter reflects the continuing hostility to engagement with the West of large parts of the hardline establishment in Tehran.

Before Christmas, negotiators were pessimistic about the future of the talks, and the three European participants — Britain, France and Germany — were threatening to pull out within weeks. They are acting as go-betweens for the United States, whose envoys Tehran is refusing to meet in person.

The original deal prevented Iran from enriching uranium to more than 3.67 per cent purity, the level required to generate nuclear power. In return, United Nations sanctions on Iran’s oil exports and finance industry were lifted.

Trump reimposed sanctions unilaterally in 2018, and in return Iran resumed enrichment to higher levels, finally reaching 60 per cent last year and bringing the 90 per cent required for nuclear weapons into view.

In the past month, Iran has made one key concession. It has accepted that Biden cannot bind the hand of successors by issuing a written guarantee that the US will never renege on the deal again.

However, Abdollahian said Iran was still seeking some written statement of intent by US and European parliaments, and it is understood that the text of the agreement does not even go this far.

Republican senators recently wrote to the White House warning it that the next administration — if their candidate were returned to power — would most probably tear up the deal “as early as January 2025”.

Mohammad Marandi, a well-connected Iranian analyst, said this was now a major issue. “Iran demands assurances, but we must see how they are designed,” he said. “If guarantees can’t be adequately devised beyond Iran’s borders, they must exist within its borders.”

The text of the new proposed deal will again restrict Iran to enrichment to 3.67 per cent, and also proposes different ways of ensuring Iran cannot use the advanced enrichment centrifuges that it has recently manufactured. Meanwhile, the US has promised to lift all sanctions that are “incompatible” with the 2015 deal.

Abdollahian also suggested that the issue of prisoners, which the US envoy Robert Malley has linked to the talks, could be dealt with separately.

He said this was a “completely humanitarian issue.” Alongside the Vienna talks, the US and UK are hoping that Iran will release prisoners like Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori, both British citizens, in return for the unfreezing of Iranian assets abroad.

Israel has opposed the deal from the start but seems resigned to the fact that it will be concluded. “The emerging new deal is shorter and weaker than the previous one,” the prime minister, Naftali Bennett, told his cabinet.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud, said the revival of the 2015 nuclear pact should be “a starting point, not an end point” to address regional concerns.

The prince said that he was hoping to schedule a fifth round of talks with Iran, its great Gulf rival, part of broader attempts in the region to settle the differences underlying many of its present conflicts.