Iran’s decision to remove 27 surveillance cameras on its nuclear activities on Thursday has revived concern from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Talks on a new Iranian nuclear deal, which have now stalled, seemed poised to come to fruition a few months ago.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) denounced on Thursday, June 9, Iran’s decision to withdraw 27 cameras monitoring nuclear activities, deploring a “fatal blow” for talks on this sensitive issue, if the blockade persists.
The day before, Tehran explained that it had disconnected some of these cameras, without specifying the number, to protest against the vote in the IAEA Board of Governors on a resolution that firmly called Iran to order and condemned the repeated violations of the current agreement.
These warnings provoked the wrath of the conservative president of Iran, Ebrahim Raissi: “Do you think that if they pass a resolution in the IAEA we will back down? In the name of God and our great nation, we will not take even one step back,” he said.
The disconnection of the cameras “naturally supposes a serious challenge for our ability to continue working there,” lamented the agency’s director general, Rafael Grossi, at a press conference at the UN body’s headquarters in Vienna on Thursday.
“One would have to have a profound misunderstanding of Iran today to be surprised by such a reaction,” said Thierry Coville, an IRIS researcher specializing in Iran. “Some of the entourage of the current president would like his country to abandon the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT),” he explains. “By agreeing, at the end of November 2021, to return to the negotiating table with Washington – hated by this ‘far right’ fringe – the Iranian government had shown a form of pragmatism, despite its anti-Western ideology. But in the face of condemnation Wednesday’s IAEA report, it was clear that Tehran’s masters were not going to sit idly by.
Optimism, then paralysis
Just a few months ago, and despite the concerns that Moscow raised about this matter, there was cautious optimism. On March 15, the IAEA director himself, in conversation with France 24, welcomed the fact that a new agreement on the Iranian nuclear issue “is not far” from being reached.
After months of indirect negotiations in Vienna, with European mediation, a text was being signed. It should allow the partial lifting of US sanctions and the return of Iran to the limits of the 2015 agreement. Concluded under the administration of Barack Obama, Donald Trump withdrew the United States in 2018.
For Thierry Coville, the US withdrawal and the return of sanctions that aggravate the poverty of Iranian society have undermined the credibility of this agreement concluded in 2015 by moderates, including former President Hassan Rouhani. Donald Trump thus contributed to the victory of the most conservative fringes of the Iranian political class in the legislative elections of 2020, and then in the presidential elections of 2021.
Orphaned of its American backer and Iranian signatories, the deal barely survived until the arrival of Democrat Joe Biden in 2021. Barack Obama’s former running mate was hell-bent on resurrecting the deal pushed by him six years earlier. How then to explain the current stagnation?
Meanwhile, Iran has set a new condition: the removal of the Revolutionary Guards, the elite corps of the Iranian military, from the US list of “terrorist organizations.” At the end of March, the US envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, responded to this request with a categorical refusal, “even in case of agreement”.
The consequence of Trump’s “maximum pressure policy”
“Washington objects that this issue has ‘nothing to do’ with the nuclear dossier, which ‘is not false’, but which nonetheless remains ‘quite hypocritical’, says Thierry Coville. ‘Including the Revolutionary Guards on the list of terrorist organizations was a decision made by Donald Trump in 2019, in order to exercise a “maximum pressure policy” against the Iranian regime. This move by the Republican president was clearly aimed at putting pressure on Tehran, in the hope of renegotiating a tougher deal with Iran.”
In an Islamic republic governed by the “far right”, the so-called “pasdaran” constitute the “heart of power”, continues the specialist in Iran. “The fact that they have been listed as terrorist organizations by Washington is unacceptable to the ruling power and its supporters, and is a matter of both ideology and national pride.
On the part of the United States, the question of the Revolutionary Guard is a matter of internal politics, continues Thierry Coville. According to him, Joe Biden and the Democrats are in a bad position as the midterm elections approach, and the idea of showing toughness towards Iran is electorally attractive. “But shouldn’t the issue of collective security of closing the Iranian nuclear file be the priority for Washington itself?” the specialist asks. “The current escalation risks leading one side to go too far, leading to a period of very high tension.”
Two directions
On the ground, far from Washington, the nuclear program has effectively resumed, violating Iranian commitments: centrifuges are running at full speed and the country continues to approach the threshold of uranium enrichment that would allow it to produce an atomic weapon.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Tehran’s latest “provocations” could lead to “a deepening nuclear crisis” and “further economic and political isolation of Iran.”
But at the same time, he left the door open for diplomacy, saying he still wanted to save the nuclear deal. At this stage, his reanimation would continue to be “very beneficial to the national security interests” of the United States, it was explained in his surroundings.
“The tensions of the last few days could push the leaders of Tehran and Washington to accept the compromise that is on the table or, on the contrary, provoke “another round of escalation that will only get worse.”
*Adapted from its original French version
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