The Iranians have paused in the current discussions in Vienna, while “some technical progress” have been recorded in recent days.
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The Europeans hoped to negotiate tirelessly during the end-of-year celebrations to try to catch up with lost time. They had to accept, on Friday, December 17, in Vienna, to make a new break in the indirect negotiations between Iran and the United States to save the agreement on nuclear power. This objective, erected in priority by the US President, Joe Biden, three years after Donald Trump denounced the initial compromise, is made very uncertain by the arrival of the Iranian presidency of the ultraconservant Ebrahim Raisi, this summer. After five months of suspension due to elections in Iran, the discussions were revived, on 29 November, in the prestigious Framework of the Coburg Palace, at the heart of the Austrian capital, where the agreement was signed in 2015.
This interruption – the second in three weeks – illustrates the risk of stagnating the talks. The first pause on December 3, had been requested by Westerners to force Iran to moderate its positions. The Iranian delegation had indeed arrived in Vienna by posting radical requirements, deemed unacceptable by Washington: the end of all the sanctions in force, adopted on the initiative of the Trump administration in the hope of establishing definitively the agreement , and guarantees supposed to prevent the United States again breaking a possible renegotiated treaty.
In passing, anxious to show his firmness, the Iranian negotiator Ali Bagheri refused to take over the negotiations where they had been arrested in June, following exchanges considered rather fruitful between the administration Biden and the power Iranian outgoing. On the contrary, the new negotiator team had even formulated a whole series of requirements to challenge little or 90% of the texts on the table.
giving-giving
The new truce responds this time to a wish of the Iranians, but it surprised the European negotiators, who described it as “disappointing interruption”. “Some technical progress” had indeed been made in the last twenty-four hours, they indicated Friday. After long explanations, Iranians had finally accepted a document presented as a “basis for discussion”, thus renouncing some of their claims.
This step must now allow to focus as soon as possible on the main issues, in a giving that remains to be translated into precise commitments: the gradual lifting of the American sanctions, likely to support the economy, against the Stop of the Iranian nuclear program. However, the latter has made considerable progress in three years, to believe the Westerners, since Tehran took his freedoms with his original commitments. The Iranians produce in disturbing amounts of enriched uranium and have modern centrifuges. One of the most thorny issues is to know, in the perspective of a new agreement, what to do in stocks of fissile materials and equipment set up in recent years by Iran.
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