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The end of the deal, hopes, delusions and treasons

Once again the us shows us its complete and total [lack of?] commitment to returning to the jcpoa..........by imposing yet more sanctions.
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0901
I`m surprised that theres really much left for the west to sanction at this point,tho from the looks of this it isnt actually iranian companies,rather its their foreign partners that are now being targeted.
Once again the wests actions speak far more loudly than its words.
Alhamdulillah, the US are now reduced to sanctioning companies that were created to or are set up to get sanctioned. I'm sure those HK or Emirati companies that were trading with Iran had planned for US sanctions when they began trading with Iran. I guess Iranian oil and gas is more valuable than the sanctions imposed, and the US is left pissing in the wind.
 
Alhamdulillah, the US are now reduced to sanctioning companies that were created to or are set up to get sanctioned. I'm sure those HK or Emirati companies that were trading with Iran had planned for US sanctions when they began trading with Iran. I guess Iranian oil and gas is more valuable than the sanctions imposed, and the US is left pissing in the wind.
If this current lack of oil continues in the market, these companies will continue disregarding sanctions because that will be the most lucrative business option left.
 
Once again we have unnamed western,ie likely european officials,claiming that a deal is close........again.
The problem is that at least one of the claims made in this article has been directly refuted by iran,ie irans supposed agreement to drop the demand for irgc delisting from the wests terrorism list.
I think the biggest problem with the europeans is that they`ve always preferred to see iran as they would wish to see it,not as it actually is.
So as with all of these claims from the west of an imminent agreement and a return to the jcpoa,take them with not just a grain but an entire salt mines worth of salt,that would be my advice.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/08/agreement-nuclear-deal-iran-us-talks-vienna-00050288
Agreement on nuclear deal within reach but obstacles remain
On Monday, The EU will officially circulate the final draft document to participants and will ask the U.S. and Iran to agree on it.

VIENNA — Indirect talks between Iran and the U.S. on restoring the 2015 nuclear deal are expected to conclude Monday in Vienna, putting the final draft of an agreement in front of negotiators from Washington and Tehran.
Western officials told POLITICO on Monday that they had finished negotiating technical questions that had remained open in the final draft text circulated by the European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on July 21. The final draft determines the steps that Iran and the U.S. will have to take to return to full compliance with the original 2015 Iran nuclear deal, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

The deal rolled back U.S. and European sanctions against Iran in exchange for steps by Iran limiting its nuclear program and an agreement to allow intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’s nuclear watchdog.


On Monday, The EU will officially circulate the final draft document to participants and will ask the U.S. and Iran to agree on it. If there is agreement, foreign ministers are expected to return to Vienna to formally restore the 2015 nuclear accord.
“There is a real chance for an agreement but there are still a number of uncertainties as always,” one senior Western official told POLITICO.
A senior EU official on Monday confirmed that the bloc has finalized the draft text in its role as coordinator and facilitator and has introduced solutions to the four technical questions that had remained open.
“It is now up to capitals to consider this text. It is the best possible effort. We have negotiated ad nauseam every single aspect,” the official said.
The senior EU official confirmed that negotiators will leave Vienna in the next few hours and that the draft text is 25 pages long.







The draft text will not solve the outstanding questions by the IAEA into the past nuclear program, the EU official explained. “It is a process between Iran and the Agency. There is no link between the two.”
An Iranian Foreign Ministry official told the official Iranian news agency IRNA on Monday that “given the continuation of discussions on some remaining important issues, we’re not yet at a stage to finalize the text. Iran has presented its constructive views to other party so as to move forward and the result is up to their political decision. We believe #VienneTalks can be closed soon provided that the other party makes an appropriate decision. But we are not there yet.”
The EU has been brokering on-again, off-again talks for 16 months between U.S. Special Envoy Robert Malley and his Iranian counterpart, Ali Bagheri Kani.
The last round of indirect talks between Washington and Tehran took place in Doha, Qatar, in late June. It ended without a major breakthrough.
Across the last five days, EU diplomats could be seen frantically rushing between two different hotels all located along Vienna’s historic Ringstrasse, where the American and Iranian delegations are based, carrying folders with documents.
Tehran has refused to talk directly to the U.S. ever since former President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the nuclear agreement four years ago and re-imposed crippling economic sanctions.

Clandestine nuclear weapons program?​

There is still one major sticking point that prevents a breakthrough in the talks despite the draft agreement being finalized by EU negotiators.
Iran has demanded that the UN nuclear watchdog close an investigation into the origins of multiple traces of man-made nuclear material that IAEA inspectors found at various sites in Iran during the past few years. Tehran insists that the nuclear deal can only be restored if this probe by the IAEA is closed once and for all.

The UN agency identified traces of uranium particles based on information uncovered by Israel’s Mossad in a secret 2018 operation. Israeli intelligence agents stole thousands of documents and CDs from a warehouse in Tehran that provided information on sites where nuclear activity may have taken place in Iran in past decades.
Western officials suspect that the uranium traces discovered by the IAEA are proof of Iran having had a secret nuclear weapons program and having actively worked on developing an atomic weapon until at least 2003.
Tehran continues to maintain that its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes. But, according to the IAEA, Iran has failed to provide credible and plausible answers into the origin of those uranium particles. This prompted the IAEA Board of Governors to censure Iran at its last meeting in Vienna in June. Western officials have been pressing Iran to provide answers and are not expected to back down from this demand.
One senior European diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter, gave one reason why Iran could be stonewalling the IAEA probe: “The Iranian regime seems to prefer to protect some individuals involved in clandestine activities 20 years ago instead of freeing its economy and opening up the future for its people.”
In search of a solution, Western diplomats involved in the negotiations in Vienna said that over the past five days, parties negotiated a separate political deal with Iran that could help close the probe — provided Iran cooperates.







According to one senior Western official, that deal will see the 35-member IAEA Board of Governors pass a resolution closing the probe into the nuclear material, if Tehran provides answers on the origin of the uranium traces that are deemed credible by the IAEA.
This deal will essentially be an updated version of a similar bargain that had been struck with Iran and negotiated by Britain, France and Germany in March.

Solutions to nuclear questions​

Over the past five days, negotiators have also worked out solutions to “technical questions” that had remained open in the final draft text that will restore the JCPOA.
One of them has to do with the details of the reinstallation of cameras that were used to monitor Tehran’s compliance under the JCPOA and that Iran switched off in June in retaliation for the IAEA Board of Governors censure.
Another technical nuclear question is apparently related to the small amount of 60 percent enriched uranium that has been converted and irradiated and that cannot be shipped out of Iran due to high radioactivity. Under the JCPOA, all highly-enriched uranium has to be shipped out of the country.
According to a senior Western official with knowledge of the matter, the final draft text contains possible solutions to both issues.

Iran backing down on delisting for now[really?]​

Another major hurdle that has held up a final deal for many months involved Iran’s request to remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a powerful branch of the Iranian military, from the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organization list. President Joe Biden insisted that he would keep the IRGC under sanctions for now.

[Not according to iran they havent]
https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/iran-reaffirms-demand-for-removing-irgc-from-us-terror-list-report-122080500109_1.html



The terrorist designation was imposed by former President Donald Trump in 2019, in addition to numerous other terrorism and human-rights sanctions on Iranian institutions and individuals that are not related to the nuclear program.
According to a senior EU diplomat, Tehran has agreed to set aside the demand and to discuss the matter in the future in direct talks with Washington.
Iran has also demanded legal guarantees from the U.S. that it will not quit a future nuclear deal. The Biden administration has repeatedly stressed that it will uphold its obligations under the deal but that it cannot provide a guarantee for future administrations.
Negotiators have therefore worked out economic assurances that will provide Iran with the opportunity to profit financially from the deal — even if a new U.S. administration were to withdraw from the pact again. One such assurance that negotiators are working out is a temporary continuation of contracts for companies doing business in Iran.
A renewed agreement would enable Iran to sell its oil freely on global markets and regain access to its frozen assets, worth an estimated $100 billion.
While Iran has been able to sell some of its oil — mostly to China — despite the sanctions, a revived nuclear pact would enable Iran to export about 1 million barrels per day above current exports, according to Henry Rome, a senior analyst with the Eurasia Group.
“If oil is trading at USD 100 per barrel, then that’s an additional USD 3 billion per month of revenue on top of existing exports,” Rome said.
 
Once again we have unnamed western,ie likely european officials,claiming that a deal is close........again.
The problem is that at least one of the claims made in this article has been directly refuted by iran,ie irans supposed agreement to drop the demand for irgc delisting from the wests terrorism list.
I think the biggest problem with the europeans is that they`ve always preferred to see iran as they would wish to see it,not as it actually is.
So as with all of these claims from the west of an imminent agreement and a return to the jcpoa,take them with not just a grain but an entire salt mines worth of salt,that would be my advice.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/08/agreement-nuclear-deal-iran-us-talks-vienna-00050288
Agreement on nuclear deal within reach but obstacles remain
On Monday, The EU will officially circulate the final draft document to participants and will ask the U.S. and Iran to agree on it.

VIENNA — Indirect talks between Iran and the U.S. on restoring the 2015 nuclear deal are expected to conclude Monday in Vienna, putting the final draft of an agreement in front of negotiators from Washington and Tehran.
Western officials told POLITICO on Monday that they had finished negotiating technical questions that had remained open in the final draft text circulated by the European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on July 21. The final draft determines the steps that Iran and the U.S. will have to take to return to full compliance with the original 2015 Iran nuclear deal, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

The deal rolled back U.S. and European sanctions against Iran in exchange for steps by Iran limiting its nuclear program and an agreement to allow intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’s nuclear watchdog.


On Monday, The EU will officially circulate the final draft document to participants and will ask the U.S. and Iran to agree on it. If there is agreement, foreign ministers are expected to return to Vienna to formally restore the 2015 nuclear accord.
“There is a real chance for an agreement but there are still a number of uncertainties as always,” one senior Western official told POLITICO.
A senior EU official on Monday confirmed that the bloc has finalized the draft text in its role as coordinator and facilitator and has introduced solutions to the four technical questions that had remained open.
“It is now up to capitals to consider this text. It is the best possible effort. We have negotiated ad nauseam every single aspect,” the official said.
The senior EU official confirmed that negotiators will leave Vienna in the next few hours and that the draft text is 25 pages long.







The draft text will not solve the outstanding questions by the IAEA into the past nuclear program, the EU official explained. “It is a process between Iran and the Agency. There is no link between the two.”
An Iranian Foreign Ministry official told the official Iranian news agency IRNA on Monday that “given the continuation of discussions on some remaining important issues, we’re not yet at a stage to finalize the text. Iran has presented its constructive views to other party so as to move forward and the result is up to their political decision. We believe #VienneTalks can be closed soon provided that the other party makes an appropriate decision. But we are not there yet.”
The EU has been brokering on-again, off-again talks for 16 months between U.S. Special Envoy Robert Malley and his Iranian counterpart, Ali Bagheri Kani.
The last round of indirect talks between Washington and Tehran took place in Doha, Qatar, in late June. It ended without a major breakthrough.
Across the last five days, EU diplomats could be seen frantically rushing between two different hotels all located along Vienna’s historic Ringstrasse, where the American and Iranian delegations are based, carrying folders with documents.
Tehran has refused to talk directly to the U.S. ever since former President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the nuclear agreement four years ago and re-imposed crippling economic sanctions.

Clandestine nuclear weapons program?​

There is still one major sticking point that prevents a breakthrough in the talks despite the draft agreement being finalized by EU negotiators.
Iran has demanded that the UN nuclear watchdog close an investigation into the origins of multiple traces of man-made nuclear material that IAEA inspectors found at various sites in Iran during the past few years. Tehran insists that the nuclear deal can only be restored if this probe by the IAEA is closed once and for all.

The UN agency identified traces of uranium particles based on information uncovered by Israel’s Mossad in a secret 2018 operation. Israeli intelligence agents stole thousands of documents and CDs from a warehouse in Tehran that provided information on sites where nuclear activity may have taken place in Iran in past decades.
Western officials suspect that the uranium traces discovered by the IAEA are proof of Iran having had a secret nuclear weapons program and having actively worked on developing an atomic weapon until at least 2003.
Tehran continues to maintain that its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes. But, according to the IAEA, Iran has failed to provide credible and plausible answers into the origin of those uranium particles. This prompted the IAEA Board of Governors to censure Iran at its last meeting in Vienna in June. Western officials have been pressing Iran to provide answers and are not expected to back down from this demand.
One senior European diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter, gave one reason why Iran could be stonewalling the IAEA probe: “The Iranian regime seems to prefer to protect some individuals involved in clandestine activities 20 years ago instead of freeing its economy and opening up the future for its people.”
In search of a solution, Western diplomats involved in the negotiations in Vienna said that over the past five days, parties negotiated a separate political deal with Iran that could help close the probe — provided Iran cooperates.







According to one senior Western official, that deal will see the 35-member IAEA Board of Governors pass a resolution closing the probe into the nuclear material, if Tehran provides answers on the origin of the uranium traces that are deemed credible by the IAEA.
This deal will essentially be an updated version of a similar bargain that had been struck with Iran and negotiated by Britain, France and Germany in March.

Solutions to nuclear questions​

Over the past five days, negotiators have also worked out solutions to “technical questions” that had remained open in the final draft text that will restore the JCPOA.
One of them has to do with the details of the reinstallation of cameras that were used to monitor Tehran’s compliance under the JCPOA and that Iran switched off in June in retaliation for the IAEA Board of Governors censure.
Another technical nuclear question is apparently related to the small amount of 60 percent enriched uranium that has been converted and irradiated and that cannot be shipped out of Iran due to high radioactivity. Under the JCPOA, all highly-enriched uranium has to be shipped out of the country.
According to a senior Western official with knowledge of the matter, the final draft text contains possible solutions to both issues.

Iran backing down on delisting for now[really?]​

Another major hurdle that has held up a final deal for many months involved Iran’s request to remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a powerful branch of the Iranian military, from the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organization list. President Joe Biden insisted that he would keep the IRGC under sanctions for now.

[Not according to iran they havent]
https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/iran-reaffirms-demand-for-removing-irgc-from-us-terror-list-report-122080500109_1.html



The terrorist designation was imposed by former President Donald Trump in 2019, in addition to numerous other terrorism and human-rights sanctions on Iranian institutions and individuals that are not related to the nuclear program.
According to a senior EU diplomat, Tehran has agreed to set aside the demand and to discuss the matter in the future in direct talks with Washington.
Iran has also demanded legal guarantees from the U.S. that it will not quit a future nuclear deal. The Biden administration has repeatedly stressed that it will uphold its obligations under the deal but that it cannot provide a guarantee for future administrations.
Negotiators have therefore worked out economic assurances that will provide Iran with the opportunity to profit financially from the deal — even if a new U.S. administration were to withdraw from the pact again. One such assurance that negotiators are working out is a temporary continuation of contracts for companies doing business in Iran.
A renewed agreement would enable Iran to sell its oil freely on global markets and regain access to its frozen assets, worth an estimated $100 billion.
While Iran has been able to sell some of its oil — mostly to China — despite the sanctions, a revived nuclear pact would enable Iran to export about 1 million barrels per day above current exports, according to Henry Rome, a senior analyst with the Eurasia Group.
“If oil is trading at USD 100 per barrel, then that’s an additional USD 3 billion per month of revenue on top of existing exports,” Rome said.

IR should just buy a rope and hang itself if it will sign a deal that will undo a decades of work and effort, to get what was rightly theirs to begin with.
 
IR should just buy a rope and hang itself if it will sign a deal that will undo a decades of work and effort, to get what was rightly theirs to begin with.

There is no chance that anything will be signed, even if there's a return to the deal's initial conditions (which is highly unlikely anyway): the JCPOA was never signed by anyone in the first place. It has never been a proper international treaty but simply a political declaration if intent.
 
Clearly the fellow who wrote this is one of zarif and rouhanis pissed off fanbois,I have to say tho`,after reading this utter bullsh!t,that I literally dont know whether to laugh,cry,or to vomit.......
I do however pray to god that people with this line of thought are in the minority,or I thnk that iran is pretty much completely fvcked

Raisi’s Inept Negotiators Are Sinking Iran Deal Talks

The incompetence of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and his team is partly responsible for the current impasse.​


By Kourosh Ziabari, a journalist and Asia Times correspondent.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/08/02/iran-nuclear-deal-talks-jcpoa-revive-raisi-negotiations/
Progressive commentators in the United States who once championed U.S. President Joe Biden and touted his appetite for multilateralism as an advantage of his foreign policy are now openly criticizing the president for his Middle East approach. Specifically, they say it’s reminiscent of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s agenda and failed legacy in the region, epitomized by his catastrophic withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).


The argument is that Biden squandered moderate former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s final months in power in 2021 to finalize a JCPOA revival while a breakthrough was imminent and that he is presently mimicking Trump’s maximum pressure scheme without showing the resolve to come to an accommodation with the new Iranian administration.


That Biden is not signaling the flexibility required to rehabilitate the atrophying JCPOA and that his decision to inflict new sanctions on Iran while the negotiations were underway were unquestionably missteps.


But it would be myopic to gloss over the role the Raisi administration’s incompetence in the craft of diplomacy has played in creating the current impasse.

When the JCPOA was first negotiated, the Iranian side was led by an engineer whose mastery of foreign relations and the art of bargaining, familiarity with the intricacies of international law, and charming presence in the global mainstream media yielded a momentum that was conducive to the nuclear deal breakthrough.



Former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif not only negotiated the JCPOA for Iran but also sold it to a conservative establishment at home and advocated for it the world over. As such, excluding a few detractors in the Persian Gulf and Israel, the international community was in consensus that it was a diplomatic showpiece.


Zarif was not flawless, of course, and his unwavering public relations for Iran cost him his charisma in the eyes of those Iranians who sensed he was acting as a mouthpiece for the regime rather than the voice of the people. But he was a seasoned diplomat conversant in his responsibilities who enjoyed global legitimacy and even the endorsement of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who once called him a “respected adversary.”


Now, the deal’s fate is in the hands of an inexperienced Iranian diplomatic corps that since day one opposed the JCPOA as fragile and a paragon of the “liberal” Rouhani administration’s submission to the West. Thus, when the Americans complain that the Iranian side is making demands beyond the scope of the JCPOA, it shouldn’t come as a surprise.


The negotiating team, led by ultra-conservative diplomat Ali Bagheri Kani—an outspoken antagonist of the JCPOA who refuses to say its name and instead refers to it as the “2015 agreement”—is leveraging the opportunity to be in the negotiating room with the world powers to clinch concessions that the original deal left out.


The Iranian foreign ministry’s lack of transparency means few details have trickled out of the process, and it remains ambiguous as to what excessive demands are being made. But we do know Iran is pushing to incorporate the delisting of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization in the nuclear deal, despite the fact that the decision to sanction the organization was Trump’s personal démarche in 2019 and is irrelevant to the JCPOA. Yet Iranian negotiators appear unwilling to admit that this sticking point should be worked out in separate talks.

Iran has also been insisting on securing guarantees from the Biden administration that the next U.S. president will not renege on the deal. Here again, this is despite the fact that the U.S. negotiators have been explaining to the Iranians since the very beginning of the talks that a legally enforceable U.S. commitment is a nonstarter, as the Biden administration simply cannot force a future U.S. president or Congress to comply with a deal or treaty indefinitely.


Iranians who felt duped and backstabbed after Trump walked away from the JCPOA in May 2018 might be right in being skeptical about the deal’s survival beyond Biden’s tenure by demanding assurances that it will be binding. But against the backdrop of inimical Iran-U.S. relations, any guarantee that could be granted seems currently unattainable.


Iran doesn’t want to concede that the impossibility of a guarantee is a corollary of the U.S. political and legal system, and even in the latest round of talks in Doha, Qatar, on June 29, it raised similar demands. In doing so, Iran has already wasted one year of the Biden administration’s term in office, and the economic dividends for Iran from a revived deal are still elusive and continue to be deferred.



Much of this is due to the Raisi administration’s eccentric, idiosyncratic brand of diplomacy, which in many ways harkens back to the tumultuous years of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who relied on what I call “camera diplomacy”: negotiating with the United States through media interviews and public speeches rather than by sending his team to talk to their U.S. counterparts face to face and maturely.


Ahmadinejad famously wrote pages-long letters to former U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, whose tenures overlapped with his time in office, and invited both to debates at the United Nations. Even his most ardent loyalists, let alone the skeptics, could conclude he was indulging in unrefined grandstanding at best and was not really prepared for any meaningful dialogue with the United States.


In the same fashion, Raisi and his foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, send messages to the U.S. administration through press conferences and public addresses, including when Amir-Abdollahian censured the United States for the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors’ castigatory resolution on Iran back in June. This is not how a political crisis aggravated by lack of trust is going to be remedied.


A team of negotiators assigned by Iran’s foreign ministry is involved in the work to resuscitate the nuclear deal, and they talk to the three European countries that were party to the JCPOA—the United Kingdom, France, and Germany—as well as China and Russia (also parties to the deal), but Raisi has adamantly rejected any prospect of engaging the United States directly. A recourse to the Russians, Chinese, and Europeans as intermediaries for exchanging communication is not a panacea, and it is unimaginable how much resources and time are trifled away when two rivals do not talk directly to sort out a point of contention and how much precision is lost in translation.


One of the assets of the Rouhani government was that it evinced the courage to defy anti-U.S. hard-liners at home, initiate direct negotiations with the United States, and engage in a process that eventually produced a diplomatic breakthrough. The Raisi administration’s stubbornness in not talking to the Americans and its insistence that such talks undermine Iran’s sovereignty will eventually prove to be its soft underbelly and one of the triggers of the JCPOA’s possible collapse. The risks of miscalculation are always higher in settings when the parties to a dispute do not communicate, and here, Iran is the side responsible for heightening those risks with its inflexibility.


Iran’s intransigence may impart the impression that it has already forgone the benefits of a regenerated deal and is not genuinely pursuing a return to the JCPOA. But that is not the case. Iran needs an agreement to redeem its collapsing economy and salvage its moribund energy sector. That the Raisi administration is playing hardball is largely an upshot of its dearth of diplomatic finesse and experience, and the fact that it is bent on ensuring the new deal is more impactful than what its rivals in the Rouhani administration accomplished in 2015, replete with new benefits it can market to its base of supporters as a “good deal.”


Iran’s senior negotiator, Bagheri Kani, has a reputation for his diplomatic inadequacies and is seen as an ideologue who was educated at the conservative Imam Sadiq University as well as has an inconsequential international portfolio. Bagheri Kani was part of a team that engaged in sporadic, hiccupped nuclear talks with the European Union between 2007 and 2013 that ended in failure and preluded the introduction of six Security Council resolutions against Iran under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter.


As he did during those convulsive years, Bagheri Kani continues to obsess over the venue and location of the talks disproportionately and sometimes seems completely incapable of making the right decisions on what he is tasked with. For instance, on June 2, shortly before the Doha talks, he traveled to Oslo, Norway, in what he claimed was an effort to move the JCPOA revival forward. Yet observers were baffled as to why he made the trip given how irrelevant Norway has been to the implementation of the Iran deal, not even being a host country for the talks since the whole saga began two decades ago.



His occasional saber-rattling against Israel, which observers say should be left to the top military brass, has also cast his credibility as a diplomat into doubt. Further, some observers also cite his lack of English language fluency as a barrier to meaningful communication with other interlocutors with whom he is supposed to reach a legal understanding on the exactitude of words and technical details.


In addition to all the hurdles thwarting a successful JCPOA restoration, Iran continues to stay its ground that verification of the full removal of secondary sanctions should be a constituent of any new arrangement and prerequisite to its going back into compliance. Yet, nobody knows what the contours of this verification mechanism are and how long it would take for the procedure to be completed for Iran to be satisfied with the outcome.


In the domain of banking, for example, will the test of verification be declared a failure if a major British bank starts processing transactions involving Iranian entities but a small French bank refuses to wire money to Iranian accounts citing outstanding due diligence issues? Then does this mean Iran will not start complying with the JCPOA because one element of the verification regime has marginally aborted and, by extension, the whole deal cannot be implemented?


Success seems to be far-fetched, and even though Biden, since assuming office, has abstained from adopting incendiary rhetoric on Iran lest he ruin the diplomatic process and play into the hands of Tehran hard-liners, he is apparently losing patience, especially when he told an Israeli TV station he doesn’t rule out military force as a last resort to simplify the nuclear riddle.


The Raisi administration’s cluelessness on what course of action to embrace and its counterproductive role in the current stalemate are not expendable, and if it refuses to revise the path, there is not going to be small culpability when the JCPOA dies and Iran plunges into a new cycle of isolation and economic freefall.
 
Typical..If you do not like the message..attack the messenger....The harder Raisi insists on the Iranian rights the more they will attack him and his negotiating team..no surprise there...
 
A single tactical nuke can completely wipe out enemy's important installations in the blink of an eye.
A 5kt tactical nuke would destroy any military base in the world. I would rather use a single 5kt tactical nuke rather than hundreds of ballistic missiles to destroy a military base.
 
A 5kt tactical nuke would destroy any military base in the world. I would rather use a single 5kt tactical nuke rather than hundreds of ballistic missiles to destroy a military base.

Prepare to receive 10x the amount of tactical nukes in return.

Nuclear war (even tactical) with an adversary that has thousands upon thousands of nukes, is not a wise military decision.

And there is also this:


Reason why nukes are mostly obsolete outside of desperate last stand to hold your territorial integrity in the face of overwhelming defeat.
 

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/15/iran-nuclear-deal-00052024

Iran delivers deadline response to draft nuclear deal​

Tehran still has concerns about economic guarantees and sanctions relief. But, according to a Western official, the safeguards investigation may be moving toward resolution.
Enrique Mora shakes hands with Ali Bagheri Kani in front of an Iranian flag.

Enrique Mora, a leading European Union diplomat, left, shakes hands with Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani in Tehran, Iran, March 27, 2022. | Iranian Foreign Ministry/AP Photo

VIENNA — Iran still has reservations about a draft deal to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement it struck with world powers, Iranian and Western officials said Monday. It was the latest sign that talks to restore the deal could drag well past what some had earlier described as a Monday deadline.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said his country hoped to share its ”final thoughts” with European officials by the end of the day.

According to one senior Western official, the Iranian answer was received by the EU on Monday evening Brussels time. The response is mostly focused on outstanding questions related to sanctions and guarantees around economic engagement. Over the last few months, Iran has continuously demanded assurance that it will be able to reap the economic benefits of a restored deal.


According to that same official, the Iranian reply does not contain any further demands with regard to the investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) into the origins of multiple traces of nuclear material that IAEA inspectors found at various sites in Iran during the past few years. Tehran has objected to the investigation and insists that the nuclear deal can only be restored if this probe by the IAEA is closed, once and for all.
The EU has drafted a proposal that will allow that to happen if the IAEA confirms that Iran has provided credible answers into the origin of the uranium traces prior to the so-called reimplementation day — the day that the nuclear deal will go into effect. But the proposal would also enable Iran to block reimplementation day, should the probe remain open.



There is no final confirmation that Iran has accepted this EU proposed deal on the IAEA safeguards investigation — or whether Iran has taken it off the table — but it seems at least in the current reply, there is no more mention of it.
Amir-Abdollahian’s remarks came as Iran’s Supreme National Security Council held an extraordinary meeting Monday afternoon, which was chaired by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. At the meeting, Iranian chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani presented a detailed report about the nuclear talks, according to Nour News, a website linked to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
The response as delivered suggests that Iran wants to continue negotiating some aspects of the draft text and falls short of providing a final reply on whether it accepts or rejects the deal put on the table by the EU one week ago in Vienna.
Yet, the Iranian reply does not sound “too inflammatory,” according to the Western official.
Diplomats from Britain, France, Germany, Iran, Russia, China and the United States have held intermittent negotiations in the Austrian capital for 16 months in an effort to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the agreement is officially called.

The talks have been brokered by Enrique Mora, the EU’s senior official responsible for the Iran nuclear file. Mora has been shuttling between U.S. chief negotiator Special Envoy Robert Malley and his Iranian counterpart, Ali Bagheri Kani, because Iran still refuses to talk to the U.S. directly

The U.S. also has been reviewing the draft text tabled by the EU last week. Malley told PBS on Friday: “We are considering the text very carefully to make sure that it lives up to the president’s very clear guidance that he would only sign up to a deal that is consistent with U.S. national security interest.”

U.S. officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the latest Iranian response to the draft text.
But Malley earlier said that the U.S. was “prepared to come back into compliance with the nuclear deal if Iran does the same.”
“And, for us, it’s very clear what that means, in terms of the sanctions relief we need to offer and the kinds of steps that Iran needs to take to roll back its nuclear program,” he said.
Nahal Toosi reported from Washington, D.C.
 
Nuclear war (even tactical) with an adversary that has thousands upon thousands of nukes, is not a wise military decision.
Or just use it against a non nuclear adversary?
Something with the same damage effect of a GBU-43, would save you 50 missiles.
 
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