For the umpteenth time since the Biden administration started indirect talks with Tehran with the aim of reaching a new nuclear agreement, it seems that the parties are approaching a breakthrough. A few days after the Politico EU website reported for the first time that the European compromise proposal is gaining support among senior officials in the West, it is possible that the US and Iran are about to bypass one of the significant obstacles on the way to a deal.
What is the actual meaning? Behanem Ben-Talblo, a senior fellow at the Institute for the Defense of Democracies, told the National Review that this is “no less than total surrender.” He referred to a report on the Iran International website about a list of concessions that the American team allegedly gave to the Iranian cargo team. According to the report, the two sides continue to discuss the details, but the published list should be the basis for any compromise that may materialize in the coming weeks.
According to the publication, the American document was distributed among “conservative circles close to President Raisi”, apparently with the intention of gathering support for an agreement. The proposed concessions will actually finally eliminate the heavy sanctions from the Trump era, which were imposed on large parts of the Iranian economy. They will allow Iran to sell 50 million barrels of oil, a move that is currently prohibited under the existing sanctions, within a period of about three months, which will constitute the time frame for implementing the agreement and will require the Biden administration to cancel a number of presidential orders from previous presidential terms.
According to the report, the American waiver of the ban on the sale of oil is expected to bring in an amount of approximately four billion dollars to Tehran during the initial period, and the entire agreement will thaw an additional seven billion of Iranian funds frozen in various banks. The waiver document also states that the US will lift sanctions on over 150 different Iranian entities, but without specifying their identities.
To all of these must be added the possibility that the compromise discourse led by the European Union and breaking the deadlock in the talks, may also lead to the lifting of American sanctions on the Revolutionary Guards. The organization will most likely not be removed from the list of terrorist organizations in the first instance, but the change in the discourse surrounding the agreement and the willingness for major Western concessions will allow other organizations to fill the IRGC safes with the thawed capital.
All these reports come at a particularly sensitive time. Classified documents revealed in Washington in recent weeks revealed an indictment against a Revolutionary Guards agent who allegedly carried out surveillance on former National Security Advisor John Bolton, with the aim of assassinating him; Other reports pointed to other senior American officials being in danger. Tehran even had a relative success when one of the regime’s supporters is the suspect in the stabbing incident in which the writer Salman Rushdie was seriously injured, at a cultural event in the state of New York.
According to the commentator Behanem Ben-Talblo, such an event alone was supposed to shelve the nuclear agreement forever. “Any agreement that gives gifts to the Iranian terrorist apparatus after countless threats made against American citizens and even an attempted execution like in the case of Rushdie, will not only severely damage national security, but will simply be a stupid and unnecessary move.”
Ahead of the upcoming midterm elections in the US, the Iranian issue appears to be racing on a sure collision course in Congress. Republicans are united in their staunch opposition to any possible nuclear deal, and many of them declare that a future Republican president will cancel any such deal on his first day in office; in the Democratic Party, hawkish members of Congress such as For example, Elaine Lurie also expressed concerns about the direction in which the nuclear talks are progressing. Most of them were particularly concerned about the government’s apparent intention to remove the Revolutionary Guards from the list of terrorist organizations, and now we have to wait and see how they will react to the compromise trend being led by the European Union in an attempt to advance the agreement.
In a kind of preview of what the coming political showdown might look like, Republican Senator and Foreign Affairs Committee member Jim Risch Tweeted and wrote Because the Iranians seek a guarantee from the Biden administration that Western companies operating in Iran will be protected, which will allow the Ayatollahs to threaten to “accelerate work on nuclear weapons”, in the event that the US wants to withdraw from the new agreement in the future.
On the other hand, in what appears to be a precursor to a quick and future response from the White House against the Democratic hawks, the Twitter account of the National Security Adviser shot back: “None of this is true.” Then, of course, he rushed to attack President Trump’s decision to withdraw from an agreement that worked well only to see how Iran accelerates and expands its nuclear program.”
The article was first published on the ‘National Review’ website.