U.S. Nears Return to Iran Nuclear Deal

Iran, the U.S. and other world powers are nearing a deal to revive the 2015 nuclear accord, although negotiators are still wrangling over significant final demands from Tehran, including the scope of sanctions relief.

An agreement could be finalized in Vienna within the next couple of days, said officials involved in the talks. President Biden has set restoring the agreement as a top foreign-policy goal. The White House views an agreement restraining Iran’s nuclear program as key to Middle East stability, allowing the U.S. to focus on China and Russia.

An agreement would set out the steps Iran and the U.S. must take to return to compliance with the 2015 deal, which imposed tight but temporary limits on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for suspending international sanctions. The U.S. pulled out of the deal in May 2018 and reimposed sweeping sanctions on Iran, which brought most international trade with Iran to a standstill.

While the terms of a restored deal would be almost identical to the 2015 pact, Iran’s so-called breakout time—the amount of time needed to amass enough nuclear fuel for a bomb—could fall to as low as six months, down from about a year in the original 2016 deal, U.S. officials say. That is because of expertise Iran has gained through its nuclear work since the U.S. exited the agreement.

Any deal would likely need final signoff by the leaders of the countries involved, which are the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Russia, China and Iran. Among the most important unresolved issues is how many U.S. sanctions will be lifted, including those on the office of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“The U.S. must prove its will to lift major sanctions,” Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi said Monday.

U.S. and European officials have indicated that they want a deal by the end of February, because of advances in Iran’s nuclear work. Western diplomats have warned they could leave the negotiating table in coming days if an agreement isn’t within reach.

“The Iranian leadership now has a choice. This is the moment of truth,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Saturday at the Munich Security Conference.

Iranian foreign-ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said Monday “the remaining issues are…the most difficult, serious and key ones.”

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Friday that negotiations had progressed substantially, “but nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed.”

Negotiations began last April, nearly three years after then-President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the nuclear deal in 2018, saying the pact gave Iran too much for too little in return.

Biden administration officials have said they hope that a restored deal could provide a platform for follow-up talks about Iran’s missile program and the network of militias that it supports throughout the Middle East. Iran, which says its nuclear work is for entirely peaceful purposes, has repeatedly said it has no interest in further talks.

Concerns about the talks have grown in Washington in recent weeks, including among some Democrats.

Iran has accrued nuclear expertise over the past two years, including its deployment of advanced centrifuges that can produce nuclear fuel more quickly, reducing the time it would take Iran to accumulate enough fuel for a weapon. That breakout time could fall further after 2026, when some of the nuclear deal’s restrictions expire. Strict limits on the size of its stockpile of nuclear fuel remain until 2031, and broad monitoring of its nuclear work will continue well beyond then.

Since the U.S. exit, Iran has massively expanded its nuclear work, including producing highly enriched uranium. It is currently within a few weeks of being able to amass enough nuclear fuel for a bomb, officials say.

The original pact wasn’t put forward for congressional approval as a treaty. However, Republicans are pressing for an in-depth congressional review of any agreement that restores the deal. That could lead to a vote in the Senate, but it would require a two-thirds majority to override a presidential veto of a resolution of disapproval.

People involved in the talks say a revival of the deal would require several months to fully prepare, with the Biden administration needing to unwind hefty sanctions imposed on Iran after Mr. Trump took the U.S. out of the deal.

Iran would also have to downgrade several tons of enriched uranium, or send it abroad, and uninstall hundreds of advanced centrifuges from its nuclear sites. The United Nations atomic agency will have to parse through footage and other material from its nuclear-monitoring activities that Tehran hasn’t given the agency access to over the last 12 months.

U.S. oil sanctions are likely to be fully lifted only once Iran has taken the steps needed to scale back its nuclear work, people close to the talks say. That means a wait of several months before Iranian oil exports can fully re-enter international markets and Western companies can begin discussing future deals with Tehran.

Iran has at least $30 billion in oil revenue trapped overseas by sanctions, and receiving some of the trapped funds could trigger an exchange of Western and Iranian prisoners.

Negotiations are coming down to key sanctions listings that Iran wants removed. That includes the Foreign Terrorist Organizations listing for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, and how broad the easing of sanctions will be on Mr. Khamenei and his top officials.

U.S. officials have said in the past that hundreds of Iranian people and entities will remain under sanctions for terrorism, human-rights and other nonnuclear reasons. Iran has called for all sanctions imposed by the Trump administration to be lifted.

Iran is calling for stronger guarantees in the agreement that the U.S. won’t again quit the deal. Mr. Biden has said the U.S. will stay in the agreement if Iran complies, and the text offers some assurances to help Iran reap the economic benefits of the deal. But the U.S. says no legal guarantee about the actions of future American administrations are possible.

Iran is also pushing for the U.N. atomic agency to drop or close soon a probe it launched in 2018 over nuclear material found in Tehran. The probe centers on nuclear-weapons work many Western governments believe Iran did in the past that could shed light on how close Iran came to mastering the skills needed to build a weapon.

On Sunday, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz urged the U.S. and its partners to ensure the probe continued. He also urged them to make sure that if a deal is restored, atomic-agency inspectors have broad scope to follow up on any suspect activity by Iran.

The Israeli government has sought to avoid a public fight with the Biden administration over its efforts to restore the nuclear deal, but top Israeli officials remain critical of the agreement.