Iran threatened to withdraw from a deal reached with UN weapons inspectors last weekend if Western countries continue with plans to blame it for its failure to cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Western leaders are planning to file a motion at the IAEA next week condemning Iran for giving up the comprehensive agreement with the UN body that gives inspectors access to its nuclear facilities.
IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi responded to Iran’s withdrawal by closing a three-month deal in Tehran last Sunday that he said pleased him that his inspectors could still do their job, albeit with less effective than before.
But the US and some European countries appear determined to leave a flag at the IAEA that Iran is behaving unacceptably, reducing its cooperation with inspectors and breaking its commitments in the 2015 nuclear deal on issues such as uranium enrichment stocks. .
In a document sent to other IAEA member states ahead of next week’s quarterly council of governors meeting in Vienna, the United States said it wanted a resolution to “express the council’s growing concern about Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA ”.
He said the council should ask Iran to reverse its breaches of the agreement and to cooperate with the IAEA to explain how uranium particles were found in undeclared ancient sites.
Iran said it considered such a move “destructive” and would end its weekend deal with Grossi. Iranian diplomats said the US motion would lead to further complications compared to the 2015 agreement, known as JCPoA.
Russia’s ambassador to the IAEA, Mikhail Ulyanov, asked for calm, saying: “The common responsibility of all 35 governors is to ensure that debates (even heated ones) do not negatively affect diplomatic efforts aimed at the complete restoration of the JCPoA.”
It is likely that the United States will decide whether the motion is due.
Some analysts said the motion was poorly planned and likely to backfire, jeopardizing the chances of broader negotiations between Iran and the US, overseen by the European Union – the first such talks since Donald Trump left JCPoA in 2018.
Ellie Geranmayeh, an Iranian analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the motion would not attract Russian support and would only lead to a reaction in Tehran.
The US offered to hold talks with Iran on how both sides can return to mutual compliance under the EU presidency, and then, at a later stage, talks on how to improve the deal and discuss other issues, including missiles. Iranian ballistics.
In a possible sign that some European diplomats are concerned that the council’s motion might put unnecessary obstacles in the way of negotiations, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said there was “diplomatic space, a window of diplomatic opportunity” for bring the JCPoA back on track.
Iran wants, as a precondition for the negotiations, that the United States remove all economic sanctions imposed by the Trump administration, but the United States said it can only discuss this issue when negotiations are underway.
The relatively calm pace at which Biden’s team is considering the prospect of direct negotiations with Iran is frustrating Tehran, but the United States does not seem to see the need for further progress in negotiations if a hard line wins the June presidential elections in Iran.
The United States seems to think that Iran’s approach to the United States will not be determined by the new president, but by any strategic consensus formed around the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.