EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton (2ndL ) and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Mohammad Zarif (R) attend the last day of the P5+1 Talks with Iran at the UN headquarters in Vienna, Austria on February 20, 2014. (DIETER NAGL/AFP/Getty Images)[/caption]“We have identified all of the issues we need to address in reaching a comprehensive and final agreement”—bold, some might say hubristic, words from European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton at the end of the latest round of nuclear talks with Iran in Vienna. Ashton was negotiating on behalf of the P5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members and Germany) with Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
As Ashton’s words indicate, nothing concrete was agreed and the two sides didn’t produce any outline of an agreed framework for future negotiations or an agenda for future meetings, consenting only to a broad range of subjects to be discussed in the coming months. But that wasn’t really the point of Vienna. Coming in the wake of the nuclear deal made last year (in which the Iranians suspended higher-level enrichment until late July in return for limited sanctions relief), this meeting was all about staying positive and moving the process forward—however incrementally. And that was achieved: P5+1 diplomats and Ashton will meet Zarif again on March 17, also in Vienna, for further discussions ahead of the July deadline to come to an agreement that allays international suspicion over the nuclear program while providing Iran with the sanctions relief it desperately needs.
Make no mistake: problems still exist, not least that the two sides are still far apart in terms of what each expects from the other. The P5+1 wants Iran to dismantle or store the majority of the 20,000 centrifuges it uses to enrich uranium (including some that are still not operational). It also wants Iran to either stop building the Arak Heavy Water Reactor or to convert it into a Light Water Reactor, which would preclude the possibility of Iran building a bomb through the production of plutonium.
These demands may cause problems further down the line. While Zarif was pleasant he was also firm, telling Iranian state TV that Iran wouldn’t “close down any site” and then reaffirming in a tweet that “none of the nuclear sites will be shut down.” He was also at pains to assure Iranian hardliners that no one had “the opportunity to impose anything on Iran during the talks.”
In fact, much of what Zarif said after the talks was clearly for domestic consumption, because this story is in many ways one of two sets of hardliners. Many in Iran’s political elite are opposed to relations with the West on principle, and fear that President Hassan Rouhani, who favors warmer ties, will “sell out” the country. As the talks began last Wednesday, Mohammad-Ali Jaafari, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said his group had kept quiet about the nuclear talks in order to avoid influencing their outcome, but claimed he was not optimistic that anything tangible would emerge from them. His comments followed on from similar remarks made by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. Opposition to the talks comes from the highest levels, so Rouhani has his work cut out.
Meanwhile US President Barack Obama has had to deal with constant attacks from the right as Republicans have threatened to destroy the deal made last November by imposing more sanctions on the Islamic Republic—an outcome that has, so far, thankfully been avoided.
And it’s not just domestic pressures Obama is facing. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia greeted last year’s deal with horror, equally terrified at the prospect of US rapprochement with Iran. Both believe the US, led by a naïve president, is falling into an Iranian trap designed to lure Washington into endless negotiations by dangling the prospect of compromise before it while Iran marches towards a nuclear bomb. Both are maintaining constant pressure on the White House through intense lobbying on Capitol Hill, and a US delegation will be visiting Tel Aviv and Riyadh in the near future to attempt to assuage the concerns of these two countries, which have become unlikely allies of sorts.
But so far things remain on course. The UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is tasked with ensuring the November agreement’s implementation, issued a report last Thursday stating that Iran is living up to its commitments. As is required of it under last November’s deal, Iran has significantly reduced its stockpile of enriched uranium to 20 per cent for the first time in four years, diluting some of the material to lower-level enriched uranium and converting some into an oxide form. It now has well below the amount needed for one bomb.
The P5+1 seems to have bought some time. The Iranians do not want the deal to collapse, or the respite they have bought themselves to end, and are willing to compromise accordingly. At the moment both parties want to keep things moving enough to face down their respective opposition. Long may it continue.
All views expressed in this blog post are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, The Majalla magazine.
