Iran President Ebrahim Raisi addresses Parliament, Tehran, November 16, 2021 (Atta Kenare/AFP)
Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi says some of the country’s assets have been unfrozen despite US sanctions.
Is he pointing to a breakthrough for Tehran over its nuclear program? Or is he bluffing to justify a return to negotiations in Vienna, after stalling for five months?
See also Iran’s Mixed Messages Over Return to Nuclear Talks
The reports of unfrozen assets were spurred last Friday by the managing director of the Islamic Republic News Agency, Ali Naderi, who said $3.5 billion had been released in Raisi’s first 100 days in office. An editorial in the Revolutionary Guards’ Javan newspaper raised the figure to $4 billion.
There was no corroboration of the claims. However, on Tuesday Raisi told Parliament, “In the beginning, the government had problems with selling oil, but now the situation has improved and I can only say that the government has access to its resources in other countries.”
Raisi gave no figure for the assets which have supposedly been freed.
Journalist Barak Ravid offers a clue to the current state of negotiations. It reports that US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told his Israeli counterpart Eyal Hulata of a possible interim agreement over the assets and US sanctions.
Sullivan reportedly said Iran would suspend its enrichment of uranium to 60%, a further Iranian step breaking the nuclear deal’s limit of 3.67%. In return, the US and allies would release some assets or issue sanctions waivers on humanitarian goods.
Axios said the proposal initially came from a “European ally” of Washington.
Huleta opposed the idea, expressing concern that Iran could maintain 20% uranium enrichment and the advanced centrifuges it has installed since suspending compliance with the deal in June 2019. He reiterated the opposition to the Biden Administration’s envoy for Iran, Robert Malley.
Breakthrough or Stalemate?
Iran has focused initially on up to $8 billion of assets in South Korean financial institutions. During the Vienna negotiations from April to June, reports circulated that the US was willing for $1 billion to be unfrozen, in return for Iran pulling back from steps which have broken provisions of the 2015 nuclear deal.
That arrangement was never confirmed, despite a visit by South Korean Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun to Tehran in April. Iran, which had detained a South Korean oil tanker for three months, returned to hostile rhetoric with the Supreme Leader calling for an import ban on South Korea’s appliances. At the start of November, Iranian officials sneered at Seoul’s donation of Coronavirus masks to a private hospital in Tehran.
Iran has agreed to resume the Vienna negotiations on November 29; however, it has continued its defiance of the International Atomic Energy Agency by hindering and even refusing inspections. IAEA head Rafael Grossi will be in Tehran next week, with Iran finally issuing an invitation after Grossi said it was “astonishing” that the Iranians had not been in contact.
Israel’s Hulata told US official Sullivan that Washington and its European partners must censure Iran at next week’s meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors.
See also Report: Iran Resumes Advanced Nuclear Production After Blocking IAEA Access
NYT admits the Biden administration stalled on and delayed negotiatons with Iran: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/21/us/politics/iran-nuclear-standoff.html
“When Mr. Biden took office, several of his top aides had high hopes that the original deal — parts of which they had negotiated — could be revived. But the administration spent two months determining how to approach a negotiation, and European officials complain that, in retrospect, that lost time proved damaging. It was only at the end of March that the two sides agreed to return to the table; the Vienna talks began in early April.”
Varharan,
You omitted the next three paragraphs of the story:
“By June, an agreement “was largely complete,” one senior administration official said. Then it became clear that Iran was stalling until its presidential elections, which brought in Mr. Raisi, a hard-line former head of the judiciary.
Initially, American officials hoped Mr. Raisi would just take the agreement that had been negotiated, make minor alterations and celebrate a lifting of most Western sanctions. Anything that went wrong, they calculated, the new president could blame on the former president and foreign minister.
But that proved a miscalculation. In late September, the country’s new foreign minister, Hossain Amirabdollahian, told The New York Times that he had no interest in conducting the kind of detailed negotiation that his predecessor had worked on for years.”
S.
No. There was no agreement on the crucial aspect of sequencing. What was agreed was what sanctions would be lifted and what technical steps Iran would take. Rouhani was lame duck president and couldn’t finalise the negotiations as it was the prerogative of the new administration which is demanding that the US and Europeans offer objective and verifiable guarantees. You also missed this from the article:
“But inside the White House, there has been a scramble in recent days to explore whether some kind of interim deal might be possible to freeze Iran’s production of more enriched uranium and its conversion of that fuel to metallic form — a necessary step in fabricating a warhead. In return, the United States might ease a limited number of sanctions.”
Iran is demanding that the U.S lift all humanitarian sanctions demanded by the International Court of Justice and unfreeze remaining assets to help it fight the Covid pandemic.
Varharan,
Exactly re no agreement on sequencing — which I repeatedly pointed over “You Go First” in early 2021.
https://eaworldview.com/2021/02/supreme-leader-and-biden-trade-you-go-first-statements/
That’s far different from Iran’s stall between June and November under the Supreme Leader via Raisi.
And, no, I didn’t miss the White House “interim deal” of unfreezing some assets in return for Iran pulling back from 60% enriched uranium — I wrote about it a few days ago on EA!
S.
Watchdog Denounces ‘Unrelenting Persecution’ Of Iranian Journalist
https://www.rferl.org/a/31567298.html
Well, bluffs by definition don’t last very long. The US $$ going down for a day or two is the extend of economic plans of mullahs.
“Or is he bluffing to justify a return to negotiations in Vienna, after stalling for five months?”
Iran has not been stalling. There has been a change in the executive and a new negotiating team has been formed. Iran has been having bilateral discussions on the nuclear issue for the last 3 months, and has been engaging in public diplomacy regarding its expectations about the outcome of the negotiations.
Varharan,
Yeah, I know the standard Raisi Government PR about “change in the executive and a new negotiating team”. No need to repeat it here.
Excuse me, but the Biden team took around 3 months to resume talks with the Rouhani admininstration. Why is the Raisi team not entitled to take sufficient time to work out its negotiating position and maximise leverage in advance of the talks?
Iran has, however, defied expectation it was “desperate” for sanctions relief. The Americans know there is a new sheriff in Tehran and his surname means “the chief”.
Well, in fact, *both* the Biden Administration and the Rouhani Government worked from January to April to renew talks — the Rouhani Government did so despite pressure from hardliners in Parliament.
The Iranian negotiating position was in place in six sets of talks in Vienna, to the point of nearing agreement. The point is that the Raisi Government put a sudden stop to that and, even now, may be trying to go back to the position before April.
Your attempted point about sanctions relief is empty bluster, so I’ll set that aside.