A European proposal to restart the nuclear agreement between Iran and Western countries is imminent. This proposal includes the release billions of dollars of Iranian funds and oil exports, in return for Iran scaling back its nuclear programme.
Sources with knowledge of the new agreement said that the new deal will be implemented in four phases over two 60 day periods.
Recent optimism expressed by Iran regarding an agreement on a revised 2015 nuclear deal with the United States, and other foreign powers, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or (JCPOA)
Iran’s negotiating team adviser Mohammad Marandi said earlier this week “we’re closer than we’ve been before” to securing a deal and the “remaining issues are not very difficult to resolve”.
The European Union’s “final text” proposal for the accord, submitted last week, was approved by the US, which says it is ready to quickly seal the agreement if Iran accepts it.
Sources familiar with the matter claim that the proposal stipulates that sanctions against 17 Iranian banks, as well as 150 economic institutions, will be lifted the day after the agreement has been signed.
It also says Tehran will immediately begin to reverse the steps it took to advance its nuclear technology, which is now beyond the scope of what the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the 2015 deal’s original signatories say is acceptable.
Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium is now at 60 percent enrichment, its highest ever and a jump from the 3.67 percent limit set out by the 2015 deal. To build a nuclear bomb, enrichment must be at least 90 percent.
Iran will be allowed 50 million barrels of oil per hour within 120 days after signing the agreement. The deal also includes the release of $7bn of Iran’s funds, which are currently being held in South Korea, the sources said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Sources say that the US will have to pay a penalty if it withdraws again from the nuclear agreement, as it did under the previous administration of President Donald Trump in 2018.
With a revived nuclear deal, the US and the deal’s other signatories – France, the United Kingdom, Germany, China and Russia, known collectively as the P5+1 – aim to contain the nuclear programme and prevent what many warn could be a nuclear weapons crisis in the Middle East.
Iran maintains its aims are peaceful and its actions fall within the country’s sovereign rights to a civilian nuclear programme.
Obstacles to be overcome
One of the main sticking points to reviving a deal appears to be a safeguards inquiry into Iran’s nuclear programme by the IAEA, which Tehran wants closed for good before the JCPOA is restored.
The nuclear watchdog demanded more cooperation regarding traces of man-made nukes found at Iranian sites years ago. This is the only way that the inquiry could be closed.
Another factor is the US designation of Iran’s elite military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as a “foreign terrorist organisation”. The US appears reluctant to meet Tehran’s demand to remove the IRGC from the blacklist to seal the deal.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has suggested the IRGC’s “terror” designation falls outside the purview of the nuclear deal and, therefore, requires separate concessions from Iran.
Right-wing US politicians and Israel, the arch-rival of Iran, have warned Washington against lifting sanctions on the IRGC. Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid spoke to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday, pressing Israel’s position that efforts to revive a nuclear deal with Iran should end.
Tehran, meanwhile, has said it will never shelve plans for revenge after the killing of the Revolutionary Guard’s top general, Qassem Soleimani.
Soleimani, who headed the elite Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of the IRGC, was killed in an American drone strike in Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, in January 2020.
Trump ordered Soleimani killed saying he was planning an “imminent” attack on American personnel in the Iraqi capital.
Iran responded to his assassination firing missiles at Iraqi troops’ bases a few days later. This caused injuries. The attacks and retaliatory strikes brought the Middle East region to the brink of war.
“This is a tougher deal to sell than the 2015 deal in that this time around there are no illusions that it will serve to moderate Iranian behaviour or lead to greater US-Iran cooperation,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“The Iranian government stands to get tens of billions in sanctions relief and the organising principle of the regime will continue to be opposition to the United States and violence against its critics, both at home and abroad,” he said.
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