Russian invasion of Ukraine is throwing into doubt global
efforts to revive the nuclear deal with Iran, just as international mediators
appeared poised to announce a breakthrough.
Negotiators from the United States, Europe, Russia, China
and Iran had largely managed to seal themselves off from outside crises around
the globe over nearly a year of talks in Austria.
But international condemnation against Russia and a globally
coordinated sanctions regime – now targeting Russian oil exports, its main
financial artery – is reverberating through the conference rooms in Vienna.
“The Russia-Ukraine crisis has certainly cast a darker
shadow over the talks than it did a few days ago,” said Naysan Rafati, senior
analyst on Iran for the International Crisis Group.
Biden administration officials say that Russia has a key
stake in reviving the agreement to reduce global risk for another nuclear-armed
state, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin waging war against the
West.
“Russia, for its own reasons, has chosen to be a participant
in these negotiations because it wants to see Iran's ability to get a nuclear
weapon constrained,” Victoria Nuland, Undersecretary of State for political
affairs, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday.
Nuland said negotiators in Vienna have nearly completed an
agreement on a pathway for the US and Iran to return to compliance with the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the formal name for the nuclear
deal that former President Trump withdrew from in 2018.
But Russian and Iranian officials in recent days have issued
statements laying out hard-line demands and casting doubt on the potential of
the talks concluding.
Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi said Tuesday that
Tehran would not abandon its red lines over rejoining the deal, which are said
to include guarantees that would bar any future US presidential administration
from withdrawing from the deal, lifting all sanctions and allowing Iran a
measure of recourse if United Nations sanctions were reimposed in a so-called
snap-back, according to Iran’s semiofficial FARS News agency.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has recently pressed
for Russia to have unhindered access to the Iranian market when sanctions are
lifted against Tehran, as Moscow is buckling under sanctions imposed over its
invasion of Ukraine.
Russia’s ambassador to Iran, Levan Dzhagaryan, reiterated on
Wednesday, “The negotiations on the nuclear deal with Iran should take into
account the legitimate interests of Russia in the implementation of
comprehensive cooperation with Iran.”
Yet Nuland, in front of lawmakers, said the US would not bow
to Russian extortion efforts related to the nuclear deal.
“Russia is trying to up the ante and broaden its demands
with regard to the JCPOA and we are not playing let us make a deal,’” she said.
Meanwhile, critics opposed to the nuclear deal in general
are expressing fury over Russia potentially benefiting from sanctions relief on
Iran.
“Let me get this straight, we're working hand in glove with
Vladimir Putin to reach a deal that will help Russia evade sanctions being
imposed for its aggression in Ukraine and work with its ally, Iran,” Senator
Bill Hagerty, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on the
Senate floor on Tuesday.
Senator Bob Menendez, Chair of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee and an opponent of the deal, said “I am specifically
concerned that returning to the JCPOA will benefit Russia economically at a
time when the international community is committed to squeezing Moscow.”
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was the
architect of the Trump administration's maximum pressure sanctions campaign on
Iran after the US exit from the deal, called it “completely nutty” to both work
with the Russians in Vienna and consider lifting terror designations on Iran,
“who are trying to kill people all across the world.”
“But the Biden admin is doing both,” said Pompeo, who is
considered a potential 2024 Republican presidential candidate.
The Biden administration argues that reviving the Obama-era
nuclear deal is the best chance to box in Iran’s nuclear ambitions, with the
regime in Tehran having significantly advanced its nuclear stockpile of
weapons-grade uranium and infrastructure for building a bomb since it started
violating the agreement’s terms in 2019.
“Nuclear capability of the kind that we don't want to see
could come to Iran in a matter of weeks and months if we don't get them back
into this agreement,” Nuland said, “That is not good for the planet. And to
have both Iran and Russia able to threaten all of us in that way would be
catastrophic at this time, not to mention what they might do if they teamed
up.”
A restoration of the JCPOA is likely to entail the Biden
administration lifting specific sanctions on Iran in exchange for Tehran
disposing of its nuclear material stockpiles and opening itself up to intrusive
monitoring by international nuclear watchdogs.
Suzanne DiMaggio, an expert on diplomacy with Iran at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the Russians’ most recent
demands for access to the Iranian market could be met using legal carve outs,
if they are limited to the implementation of a restored JCPOA.
“But if the goal is broader – such as sanction-proofing a
range of Russian interactions with Iran beyond the scope of the deal – it will
complicate things,” she wrote in an email to The Hill.
“The implications are still unclear because the Russians
haven’t clarified their objectives. The longer they take to spell out their end
goals; it appears their intention is to derail the process.”
Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense
of Democracies, said that reaching an agreement is still possible with Russia’s
eleventh-hour demands, but it does require grit and a willingness to delay the
deal.
“Make no mistake, Russia is looking to use Iran as a
sanctions busting hub to offset Ukraine-related sanctions pressure,” he wrote
in an email to The Hill.
“Russia and Iran have often raised last minute demands in
negotiations in a bid to get more and offer less. What makes this different is
Russia's raging war in Ukraine.”
Both US and European officials have stressed that the
indirect talks between the US and Iran over the past 11-months in Vienna are
nearing an end, either to revive the JCPOA or allow it to become obsolete.
Iranian officials have refused to engage directly with the
Biden administration in objection to Trump’s withdrawal from the deal, a
position DiMaggio urged Iran to reverse.
“The Iranians should seriously consider moving from indirect
to direct communications with US negotiators,” she wrote to The Hill.
“If the talks collapse, there will be efforts to get them
back on track, but it will take time and it’s possible that the JCPOA will no
longer be the vehicle. In such a case, we shouldn’t expect that either the
Biden administration or the Iranians could easily pivot to a new basis for
negotiations given rapidly changing circumstances.
While Moscow’s new demands may kill the talks, there are
some signals that the Vienna negotiators could announce an agreement
shortly.
Rafati, of the International Crisis Group, said an agreement
reached by Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency over the weekend to
resolve an investigation into uranium particles at old yet undeclared sites
signaled one step forward on a key sticking point.
And Iran’s chief negotiator in the nuclear talks, Ali
Bagheri Kani, reportedly returned to Vienna on Wednesday after discussions in
Tehran with Iranian leaders, a strong signal that specific decisions are being
reached.
Russia’s representative in the talks, Mikhail Ulyanov,
tweeted on Wednesday that negotiators are at the very last stage of the
diplomatic marathon towards restoration of the deal.
