Iran Digest Week of February 25 - March 4
/AIC’s Iran digest project covers the latest developments and news stories published in Iranian and international media outlets. This weekly digest is compiled by Communications Associate Elizabeth Kos. Please note that the news and views expressed in the articles below do not necessarily reflect those of AIC.
US-Iran Relations
Iran's supreme leader criticises U.S. over Ukraine crisis
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday the war in Ukraine should be stopped and accused the "mafia-like regime" of the United States of creating the conflict.
Russia, whose troops invaded Ukraine last week, is a strategic partner for Iran, which has been under Western sanctions for years. While Tehran and Washington have been foes for decades, Iran and Russia have deepened trade ties and have been allies in the Syrian conflict.
"The U.S. regime creates crises, lives off of crises and feeds on various crises in the world. Ukraine is another victim of this policy," Khamenei said in a televised speech.
"In my view, Ukraine is a victim of the crises concocted by the United States," he said. "There are two lessons to be learnt here. States which depend on the support of the U.S. and Western powers need to know they cannot trust such countries."
(Reuters)
Nuclear Accord
IAEA chief to visit Iran in possible boost to nuclear deal
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency will visit Tehran on Saturday, the agency confirmed on Thursday, raising the prospect of progress on one of the last thorny issues blocking a revival of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
"Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi will travel to Tehran for meetings with senior Iranian officials on Saturday. They will discuss outstanding safeguards issues with a view to address(ing) them," the IAEA said in a statement.
A major sticking point in the talks is that Tehran wants the issue of uranium traces found at several old but undeclared sites in Iran to be closed even though Western powers say that is a separate issue to the deal, which the IAEA is not a party to, several officials have told Reuters.
The IAEA has repeatedly reported that Iran has failed to give satisfactory explanations on the origin of the traces of processed uranium. Those traces suggest there was nuclear material there that Iran did not declare to the agency.
(Reuters)
Iran, U.S. Close to Reviving Iranian Nuclear Deal
After weeks of intense negotiations in Vienna involving the U.S. and Iran, and Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, senior diplomats said they were now within reach of an agreement that would restore the 2015 deal. That pact lifted most international sanctions on Tehran in exchange for strict but temporary restrictions on Iran’s nuclear work.
“We are very close to an agreement,” chief British negotiator Stephanie Al-Qaq said on Twitter late Thursday. “Now we have to take a few final steps.”
U.S. and Iranian officials cautioned there was at least one big issue that still needed solving: Iran has been pushing for more sanctions relief if the nuclear deal is restored. In particular, it wants the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to be taken off Washington’s most significant terror sanctions list, the Foreign Terrorist Organization.
The U.S. has long pushed back against the demand given the Revolutionary Guard’s role across the Middle East backing designated terrorist groups such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah. A final decision would almost certainly need to be cleared at the highest levels in the Biden administration.
However, it is almost certain under any restored nuclear deal that the Biden administration will lift sanctions on dozens of terrorist-listed people and entities, a move that is already sparking criticism in Washington.
(The Wall Street Journal)
Iran nuclear talks down to the wire against backdrop of global tensions
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has cast a shadow over talks to revive the Iran nuclear deal, which extended beyond a presumed deadline Tuesday amid growing doubts that a new agreement is in sight.
Iran’s chief negotiator returned to Vienna from a visit to Tehran over the weekend with hardened demands, diplomats say, dampening hopes that an agreement to bring the United States back into the deal and Iran back into compliance would be wrapped up by the end of February. European negotiators had warned that they were prepared to walk away if there was still no agreement by Monday.
On Monday the United States joined the warning, with State Department spokesman Ned Price telling reporters in Washington that the Biden administration also is “prepared to walk away if Iran displays an intransigence to making progress.”
Negotiators have spent the past 10 months trying to hammer out an agreement on the terms under which the United States will return to the nuclear deal negotiated by President Barack Obama, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and bring Iran back into compliance. President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the agreement and impose tough sanctions on Tehran prompted Iran to renege on its promises to refrain from enriching uranium.
(The Washington Post)
Economy
Iran can reach top oil output 2 months after nuclear deal -oil minister
Iranian oil production capacity can reach its maximum less than two months after a nuclear deal is reached, Oil Minister Javad Owji was quoted as saying on Thursday.
Iran sits on the world’s fourth-largest oil reserves but its crude output has dropped since the imposition of U.S. sanctions on its economy in 2018, when then-U.S. President Donald Trump exited a 2015 nuclear deal.
"As soon as nuclear negotiations in Vienna are concluded, we can reach our maximum oil production capacity in less than one or two months," Owji was quoted as saying by the official oil ministry news agency SHANA on Telegram. "However, we are in no way tied to waiting for the nuclear talks."
Iran pumped 2.4 million barrels per day on average in 2021, and plans to increase output to 3.8 million barrels per day if sanctions are lifted.
(Reuters)
Women In Iran
Iranian ambassador to UK removed from post over hijab incident
The Iranian ambassador to the UK has been ordered back to Tehran and is to be removed from his post after a video circulated showing an embassy reception at which some women did not have their heads covered.
At the event commemorating the 43rd Iranian Revolution, a woman playing a piano alongside a violinist was not wearing a hijab. Another video of the event showed a more conventional gathering at which speeches were given.
An Iranian in London tweeted a video of the event, attended largely by diplomats, asking whether the party would “with the presence of these people have the slightest benefit for the Iranian people?”. He later tweeted: “It is gratifying that our voice was heard in Iran. Please send an ambassador to London who is pragmatic and worthy of serving Iran and working only for the benefit of the Iranian people.”
Baharvand was appointed by the foreign ministry before the presidential elections, but took up his London posting in July after the change in leadership of the department. He was previously the deputy head of the legal department in Iran under Mohammad Javad Zarif, the former foreign minister.
(The Guardian)
Inside Iran
Satellite photos show Iran had another failed space launch
Iran likely suffered another failed launch of a satellite-carrying rocket while attempting to reinvigorate a program criticized by the West, even as Tehran faces last-minute negotiations with world powers to save its tattered nuclear deal in Vienna.
Satellite images from Maxar Technologies seen by The Associated Press show scorch marks at a launch pad at Imam Khomeini Spaceport in Iran’s rural Semnan province on Sunday. A rocket stand on the pad appears scorched and damaged, with vehicles surrounding it. An object, possibly part of the gantry, sits near it.
Successful launches typically don’t damage rocket gantries because they are lowered prior to takeoff. Iran also usually immediately trumpets launches that reach space on its state-run television channels, and it has a history of not acknowledging failed attempts.
The successive failures raised suspicion of outside interference in Iran’s program, something Trump himself hinted at by tweeting at the time that the U.S. “was not involved in the catastrophic accident.” There’s been no evidence offered, however, to show foul play in any of the failures, and space launches remain challenging even for the world’s most-successful programs.
(Associated Press)
Iran's Khamenei says homosexuality example of West's immorality
Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei described homosexuality as part of the "moral deprivation" widespread in Western civilisation, during a televised speech on Tuesday.
"There is severe moral deprivation in the world today such as homosexuality and things that one cannot bring oneself to even talk about. Some have rightly called Western civilisation a new age of ignorance," Khamenei said.
Western rights groups have often criticised Iran, where homosexual acts among men can be punished by the death penalty.
"The same moral vices of the age of ignorance (in pre-Islamic Arabia) exist today in the so-called civilised Western world in an organised and more widespread way. Life in Western civilisation is based on greed, and money is the basis of all Western values," Khamenei said.
(Reuters)
Regional Politics
Saudi Arabia hopes to reach agreement with Iran - Crown Prince
Saudi Arabia intends to continue "detailed talks" with Iran in order to reach a satisfactory agreement for both, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman said, while stressing the need for a strong nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers at talks in Vienna.
He said in remarks to The Atlantic carried by Saudi state media on Thursday that direct talks with Iran would enable reaching "a good situation and mark a bright future" for the region's Sunni Muslim and Shi'ite powers, which have been locked in a rivalry playing out in conflicts across the Middle East.
"Iran is a neighbour forever, we cannot get rid of them and they cannot get rid of us," the Saudi state news agency cited him as saying.
Riyadh and its Gulf allies had seen the pact as flawed for not addressing their concerns over Iran's ballistic missiles programme and network of proxies, including in Yemen where Saudi Arabia is embroiled in a costly war.
(Reuters)
Analysis
House GOP opens a new shameful chapter in diplomatic sabotage
By: Paul R. Pillar
The Russian assault on Ukraine has stirred so much emotion, consumed so much bandwidth, and elicited so much anger at Vladimir Putin’s regime that those who have other agendas to pursue are strongly tempted to somehow link those agendas to the current crisis.
An especially strained example of this comes from those who oppose any diplomatic agreements with Iran and have tried to destroy the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the multilateral accord that severely restricted the Iranian nuclear program. Their efforts no doubt are spurred in part by reports that negotiations in Vienna on restoring compliance with the JCPOA may be close to reaching agreement.
The attempts at linkage by the JCPOA opponents center on the fact that the Russian government has been involved in both the original negotiations that produced the JCPOA and the current talks on restoring compliance. Sometimes the assertion is that the Biden administration is determined to restore the JCPOA, is dependent on Russia for doing so, and therefore will not stand up to Russia for its offenses in Ukraine — never mind how much this assertion is at odds with what the administration already has done in responding to the Russian aggression. Sometimes the argument is that because Russia is involved, restoration of the JCPOA would somehow be a “win” for Putin.
The JCPOA is a multilateral accord in which the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Germany, the European Union, and Iran all have been involved. Russian diplomats participated alongside their counterparts from the other parties, but the original agreement was not “negotiated by Putin,” nor will an agreement on restoring compliance. If any product of multilateral diplomacy is to be considered tainted merely because Russian diplomats are involved, that would apply to countless resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, international conventions, and other multilateral diplomatic instruments, many and probably most of which are indisputably in U.S. interests.
(Read the Full Article)
