Iran may continue its nuclear program, and therefore flout the conditions of the Vienna agreement signed in 2015, Westerners continue to try to discuss with the regime to avoid the worst, even in this period of repression in The country.
by Philippe Ricard
Analysis. It is a ghost capable of haunting relations between Iran, Western powers, China and Russia against the backdrop of war in Ukraine. The Iranian nuclear agreement is moribund, but no one among negotiators officially recognizes the failure of negotiations initiated since the return to power of Joe Biden in the hope of saving the compromise denounced by his republican predecessor, Donald Trump , in 2018.
The deal “is dead, but we will not announce it,” observed the American Democratic President in mid-December, according to an amateur video shot during an impromptu exchange with Iranian opponents, who denounce all Perspective of compromise against the backdrop of the uprising of the uprising engaged in the country.
“It is not for me to award death certificates”, said a month earlier in Paris his emissary for Iran, Robert Malley, one of the workers’ ankles of the Vienna Agreement, or joint understanding plan of action (JCPOA), signed with Tehran under the Obama presidency, eight years ago. European negotiators do not make more illusions, contenting themselves with repeating that the negotiations, suspended in fact, are in a “critical state”.
In reality, the talks were not far from completed in August 2022, before final Iranian requests interpreted in Western capitals as the sign of tensions within the regime, and the will of its most wing hard to do battle. In exchange for a return from Tehran to its initial commitments, the Biden administration remains ready to lift most of the sanctions taken by Donald Trump, when he had unilaterally denounced the JCPOA, almost five years ago, except those concerning Revolutionary guards.
Enriched uranium production
The “maximum pressure” imposed then by the Republicans did not prevent Iran from accelerating its program, to the point of being able to acquire a nuclear bomb in less than two years, for the more pessimistic. In November 2022, the country began producing uranium 60 % enriched at the Fordo underground nuclear power plant, as it did in 2019 to that of Natanz. And he continues to violate transparency commitments over his activities made to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Every day that passes therefore buries a little more the hope of restoring the initial agreement, as the progress of the Iranian program gradually makes it obsolete.
However, each other try by all means to save appearances, as if to give the illusion that dead would still be alive. Several reasons explain this concern. The first is the desire not to break contact with the Iranian regime, despite the headlong flight which is its own, far beyond the only nuclear question. The repression of the demonstrations aroused since September by the death of the young Kurdish Mahsa Amini is not the least of the signs of stiffening of a power of which Westerners foresee, basically, that it is however able to resist This unpublished uprising.
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