WASHINGTON – As Ebrahim Raisi prepares to assume office on Thursday, the US is closely following the transition process to evaluate how the new Iranian president will affect the dynamic of the indirect Vienna talks between Washington and Tehran about a mutual return to the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal.
The last round of talks took place almost six weeks ago on June 20, and since then, the sides are yet to reschedule another one.
The negotiating process with Iran to revive the 2015 nuclear deal could not go on indefinitely, and the ball is in Tehran’s court, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last Thursday.
“We are committed to diplomacy, but this process cannot go on indefinitely,” he said, addressing a news conference in Kuwait.
“At some point, the gains achieved by the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] cannot be fully recovered by a return to the JCPOA if Iran continues the activities that it’s undertaken with regard to its nuclear program,” Blinken said.
“We have clearly demonstrated our good faith and desire to return to mutual compliance with the nuclear agreement,” he said. “The ball remains in Iran’s court, and we will see if they’re prepared to make the decisions necessary to come back into compliance.”
A US official told The Jerusalem Post: “It became pretty clear that there are kind of more substantive issues in Tehran that they’re working out through the transition process” that are affecting a return to the Vienna talks.
“I think it’s also reasonable to believe that there are differences of opinion between the [President Hassan] Rouhani team and how they thought the talks should go – and what the outcome should be and what the Raisi team thinks,” the official said. “I think at this point, we’re not jumping to any conclusion as to what we think the outcome will be of this process, because we just honestly don’t have enough information.
“We are thinking through what it means if talks resume, what it means if talks won’t resume, what it means if talks resume but aren’t successful – we’re thinking through all of that,” the official added. “But until we actually know what the Iranians are going to come back with, it’s a little premature to kind of make a decision as to what we’re going to do.”
REGARDING THE Iranian provocations in recent months while negotiations have been taking place on a return to the 2015 deal, the official said: “Our expectations are reasonably low here. We didn’t restart JCPOA talks because there’s a lot of love and trust there – there isn’t. So I don’t think that the kinds of tests and provocations at this point are making us say on their own that we should go back to the JCPOA or we shouldn’t.
“The decision to pursue a mutual return to the JCPOA is because of this administration’s opinion, its determination as for what’s best for the US, what’s best for our partners [and] what’s best for international security,” the official told the Post. “And so, it doesn’t make us change that opinion of what we think is best.
“I think what these [provocations] do is they obviously make it harder. They increase the complexity of talks. They introduce a lot of uncertainties that are not very helpful. And certainly, they raise the very legitimate concern that the Iranians may not be prepared to engage in the negotiations we need to engage in,” the official said.
“But in terms of our overall approach and overall mindset, it’s always been [because] we think the JCPOA is the best thing we can do for our security. And so from that standpoint, we’re still interested in mutual return.”
Any sanction relief associated with the agreement would include only those that are related to the deal, the official said, adding: “If it was covered by the JCPOA, it will be covered by the JCPOA. But some new sanctions – for instance, human rights and election interference – aren’t covered by the JCPOA, so they won’t be covered by a return to the JCPOA.”
Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank in Washington, told the Post: “The supreme leader is the supreme decider, but now he has a president in Raisi who, unlike Rouhani, is not enthusiastic about a return to the JCPOA, who believes in a resistance economy that doesn’t depend on Western investment and who has seen that nuclear escalation only leads to more Biden administration concessions.”
“The clerical regime is moving closer to a nuclear-threshold state as it strings along American negotiators,” he said. “It may decide to return to the nuclear deal, but only after it has squeezed every last concession out of Washington and firmly put itself on a pathway to nuclear weapons as JCPOA restrictions expire.”
Reuters contributed for this report.