Iran further breaches deal as talks ‘head toward impasse’
Defense secretary Austin arrives to discuss nuke threat • US official: Tehran not serious about return to JCPOA
Iran launched advanced uranium enrichment machines on Saturday, further violating the 2015 nuclear deal, a day after US and Iranian officials clashed over what sanctions the US should lift for the countries to return to the agreement.
The Iranian threat is expected to be at the top of the agenda for US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s visit to Israel this week. Austin is scheduled to meet with Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday and Monday.
An Israeli official said that Jerusalem views the timing of Austin’s visit as crucial, while indirect talks between Iran and the US ongoing in Vienna, confrontations between Israel and Iran at sea have escalated, and Tehran increases its violations of the nuclear limitations in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ( JCPOA).
The official also viewed the fact that Austin chose to come to Israel in his first 100 days in office as a positive indication for continued defense cooperation between Jerusalem and Washington.
The talks in Vienna, in which European Union officials are shuttling between the remaining parties to the deal and the United States, aim to restore the bargain at the core of the agreement – restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of US and other international sanctions.
“All Trump sanctions were anti-JCPOA & must be removed—w/o distinction between arbitrary designations,” Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said on Twitter.
The US left the JCPOA
under former president Donald Trump in 2018; Iran began flouting the deal’s nuclear limitations soon after, having kept its program intact as it had been before the deal, and had ramped up its aggression throughout the Middle East in the years after the JCPOA was reached.
Iran has demanded that all US sanctions since the 2017 be removed.
The United States says it is prepared to lift “sanctions that are inconsistent with the JCPOA.” While it has declined to elaborate, that appears to exclude sanctions formally unrelated to nuclear issues covered by the deal, such as human rights.
A senior US State Department official told reporters the United States had seen some signs of Iranian seriousness about returning to the nuclear pact but “certainly not enough.”
“If Iran sticks to the position that every sanction that has been imposed since 2017 has to be lifted or there will be no deal, then we are heading towards an impasse,” the senior US official told reporters on a conference call.
Whether the statements are opening gambits or more firm positions remains to be seen.
European officials said Iran was bargaining hard at the outset.
The remaining parties to the accord – Iran, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia – met again on Friday after talks formally began on Tuesday and they agreed to keep going, Russian and Chinese envoys said.
“The #JCPOA participants took stock of the work done by experts over the last three days and noted with satisfaction the initial progress made,” Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s envoy to the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said on Twitter after the meeting formally known as the Joint Commission.
“The Commission will reconvene next week in order to maintain the positive momentum.”
The remaining parties have formed two expert-level working groups whose job is to draw up lists of sanctions that the United States will lift and of nuclear restrictions Iran will implement. Their work continues between Joint Commission meetings.
“All parties have narrowed down their differences and we do see the momentum for gradually evolving consensus,” Wang Qun, China’s ambassador to the IAEA, told reporters.
On Saturday, Iranian state TV aired a live broadcast of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani ordering the new breach of the JCPOA on Iran’s National Nuclear Technology Day, involving the injection of uranium gas into 164 IR-6 centrifuges, 30 IR-5 centrifuges, and mechanical tests on IR-9 machines with the capacity of 50 early IR-1 machines.
“Once again, I stress that all our nuclear activities are peaceful and for non-military purposes,” Rouhani said in televised remarks.
“We continue to be committed to our pledge to NPT (non-proliferation treaty) and to the world not to deviate militarily from our nuclear program,” Rouhani said.
The UN atomic watchdog flagged another breach by Iran on Friday, a report by the agency seen by Reuters showed, likely raising tensions with Western powers.
The IAEA avoids saying Iran has breached the deal. At the same time, it generally only issues such ad hoc reports to member states in the event of a breach. Two diplomats told Reuters what the report described amounted to a fresh breach.
The breach has to do with what counts officially towards Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, a highly sensitive issue since that stockpile could be enriched further to weapons-grade material suitable for nuclear bombs if Iran chose to do so.
After the deal was reached in
2015 the parties to it defined what should count towards the stockpile, and excluded items such as scrap fuel plates with uranium enriched to near 20% fissile purity, which were deemed “unrecoverable.” Friday’s report, however, said Iran had recovered some of that material.
While the amount of enriched uranium extracted is small, it amounts to a fresh breach at a delicate stage.
After talks among the remaining parties to the deal wrapped up on Friday, France’s Foreign Ministry said a “positive” first week of negotiation should not be undermined by new Iranian provocations.
“In this context, it is all the more important that Iran refrain from any further violation of its nuclear commitments that could undermine the current dynamic,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Agnes von der Muhll told reporters.
David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector and a hawk on Iran, said the latest breach also raises questions about what major powers excluded from the enriched uranium stockpile.
“Looking back, exempting this near 20% enriched uranium scrap was probably not a good idea,” he said, explaining what scrap means in this case: “When enriched uranium is made into fuel plates, some does not get used, somewhat like batter for a cake.”
Last week, in response to a State Department remark that the US is “prepared to take the steps necessary to return to compliance... including by lifting sanctions that are inconsistent with the JCPOA,” a senior official in Jerusalem expressed concern that reduced pressure on Iran will not moderate its position.
“One of our problems with the American position... is that, if you ask people here in the region, the Iranians have moderated their position only when there has been persistent and determined pressure on them,” the Israeli official said. “Lifting the leverage that you have… is not the way to get the Iranians to moderate their position.” •
Israel and Iran, which reached an explosive peak last week with the attack on the Iranian Saviz cargo ship, believed to have been carried out by the Israel Navy.
This warfare is considered now, alongside Israel’s ongoing strikes in Syria, to be the most dominant front in the IDF’s “War Between the Wars,” campaign in which it combats Iran’s attempts to further entrench itself in the region.
Experts say that the Red Sea area has become a primary venue for confrontation between Jerusalem and Tehran over the past three years, and its main objective, on the Israeli side,
is to damage the shipment of oil that is meant to fund arms transferred to Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies in the region.
A sign of this shadow war was exposed only recently when an Iranian attack on an Israeli-owned cargo ship was reported near the Gulf of Oman. Then, a former senior defense official experienced in combating Iran as well as its at-sea capabilities, suggested that it came as a reaction to an Israeli operation.
It is still unclear if, and in what form, Austin’s visit will affect the nature of this campaign. It was suggested that the Americans were unhappy with the Israeli-attributed actions in recent days – especially with the ongoing JCPOA talks.
However, judging by remarks made in recent days by senior officials such as Netanyahu and Gantz, it seems that Israel ascribes great importance to the maritime arena in the overall battle against Iranian expansionism.
“We have attack systems that work 24/7, 365-days-a-year, and are ready to act in any front, in every measure, and in any dimension that the IDF will be asked to operate within,” Gantz said at a ceremony on Wednesday.
It is believed that the American defense establishment is a channel to maintain effective relations between the two countries even in times of diplomatic disagreements.
Austin’s visit could set the tone for the near future, and reflect the administration’s expectations from Israel. •
LEAK
attacked side an alibi to save face and avoid needing to retaliate.
While leaks months after an
explosion at a key Iranian nuclear facility in July 2020 eventually seems to lead to Israel, there was an elaborate public relations campaign to point the finger in other directions.
In contrast, such a quick almost real-time taking credit increases the prospect of retaliation by the Islamic Republic.
Haaretz and others have reported that an individual who leaked the operation’s details asked the reporter to wait with its publication, after the defense establishment had decided to postpone it by one day.
The operation was reportedly classified as high-risk for the soldiers involved and was planned as part of a wider strategy by the Defense Ministry to prevent Iran’s further establishment in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.
The fact that such a sensitive operation was leaked raised concerns among Israel’s top security officials, which stressed that publishing any information about the operation beforehand would put lives at risk.
Eventually, the operation was successfully carried out a day after its original date. Its details were then published by the media outlet that originally received the leaked information – presumed to be The New York Times.
There appear to be two versions of the leak.
In one version, an Israeli official updated a counterpart American official with the understanding that the US would keep the information confidential.
This was based on understandings followed in recent years as a condition for Israel being more open with the US.
In another version, the
Israeli
leak to the US, or in some other fashion to the media, was illegal, and may need to be investigated.
Some sources are pointing fingers at the US, while others are implying rival defense or intelligence officials within Israel.
The Prime Minister’s Office and Defense Minister Benny Gantz had not commented by press time.
whether on the diplomatic level or in the field.
“These Palestinian actions have a destructive impact on relations with Israel,” he stated.
A Palestinian official said on Saturday that the PA leadership is hoping that US President Joe Biden will call PA President Mahmoud Abbas soon.
The Palestinians boycotted the US administration after former president Donald Trump’s December 2017 decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Blinken announced last week that the Biden administration was planning to restart US economic, development, and humanitarian assistance for the Palestinians.
The aid includes $75 million in economic and development assistance for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, $410m. for peace-building programs through the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and a $150m. in humanitarian assistance for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).
“The United States is committed to advancing prosperity, security, and freedom for both Israelis and Palestinians in tangible ways in the immediate term, which is important in its own right, but also as a means to advance towards a negotiated two-state solution,” Blinken said in a statement. •