Iran’s decision on Thursday to withdraw 27 surveillance cameras from its nuclear activities has raised concerns from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Now paralyzed, the talks for a new Iranian nuclear deal seemed to be on the way to a conclusion a few months ago.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) denounced, Thursday, June 9, the decision of Iran to withdraw 27 surveillance cameras from nuclear activities, deploring a “fatal blow” to the talks in this sensitive file, if the blockage were to persist.
The day before, Tehran explained that it had disconnected some of these cameras, without specifying the number, to protest against the vote in the Board of Governors of the IAEA of a resolution which firmly called Iran to order and condemned repeated breaches of the agreement in place.
These warnings provoked the ire of the Iranian conservative President Ebrahim Raisi “Do you think you’re passing a resolution at the IAEA and we’re going to back down? In the name of God and our great nation, we won’t back down one step,” he said.
The disconnection of the cameras “naturally poses a serious challenge to our ability to continue working there”, lamented the director general of the Agency, Rafael Grossi, during a press conference at the headquarters of the UN body in Vienna, Thursday.
“One would have to profoundly misunderstand today’s Iran to be surprised by such a reaction,” explains Thierry Coville, researcher at IRIS, specialist in Iran. “Part of the entourage of the current president would like their country to come out of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT)”, he explains. “By agreeing, at the end of November 2021, to return to the negotiating table with Washington – reviled in this ‘ultra hard’ fringe, the Iranian authorities had shown a form of pragmatism , despite its anti-Western ideology. But in the face of the IAEA’s condemnations on Wednesday, it was clear that Tehran’s masters were not going to sit idly by.”
Optimism, then paralysis
Barely a few months ago, and despite Moscow’s concerns about the issue, the time was nevertheless for cautious optimism. On March 15, the director of the IAEA himselfon the set of France 24, welcomed that a new Iranian nuclear deal is “not far” from being realized.
After months of indirect negotiations in Vienna, via European mediation, a text was indeed about to be signed. It was to allow the partial lifting of American sanctions and a return of Iran to the nails of the 2015 agreement. Concluded under the administration of Barack Obama, Donald Trump withdrew the United States from it in 2018.
For Thierry Coville, the American withdrawal and the return of sanctions aggravating the poverty of Iranian society have discredited this agreement concluded in 2015 by the moderates, including former President Hassan Rouhani. Donald Trump thus contributed to the triumph of the most conservative fringes of the Iranian political class, during the legislative elections of 2020, then in the presidential, in 2021.
Orphan of its American sponsor and its Iranian signatories, the agreement survives painfully until the arrival of Democrat Joe Biden in 2021. The former running mate of Barack Obama was determined to resuscitate the agreement concluded by the latter six years more early. How, then, to explain the current impasse?
Iran has meanwhile set a new condition: the removal of the Revolutionary Guards, the elite corps of the Iranian army, from the American list of “terrorist organizations”. A request to which the American envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, responded at the end of March with a categorical refusal – “including in the event of an agreement”.
The consequence of Trump’s ‘maximum pressure policy’
“Washington objects that this question has ‘nothing to do’ with the nuclear issue, which is ‘not wrong’, but nevertheless remains ‘quite hypocritical'”, believes Thierry Coville. “Place the Revolutionary Guards on the list of terrorist organizations is a decision that was made by Donald Trump in 2019, with a view to exercising a ‘policy of maximum pressure’ against the Iranian regime. However, this measure by the Republican President then clearly aimed to pressurize Tehran, in the hope of renegotiating a tougher agreement with Iran.
In an Islamic republic ruled by the “ultra toughs”, those called the “pasdarans” constitute the “heart of power”, continues the specialist in Iran. “That they are placed on the list of terrorist organizations by Washington is unacceptable for the power in place and its supporters, it is there, at the same time, a question of ideology and national pride”.
On the American side, the question of the Revolutionary Guards is a “domestic political issue”, continues Thierry Coville. According to him, Joe Biden and the Democrats are in bad shape as the midterm elections, and the idea of showing firmness against Iran sells electorally. “But the very priority for Washington, shouldn’t it be this issue of collective security represented by the closure of the Iranian nuclear file?” asks the specialist. “The current escalation risks leading one of the parties to go too far, which brings us into a period of very high tension.”
two directions
On the ground, far from Washington, the nuclear program has indeed resumed, in violation of Iranian commitments: the centrifuges are running at full speed, and the country is still approaching the threshold enrichment of uranium which would enable it to produce an atomic weapon.
The head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken warned that Tehran’s latest “provocations” risked leading to “an aggravated nuclear crisis” and “increased economic and political isolation of Iran”.
But at the same time, he left the door open to diplomacy, saying he still wanted to save the nuclear deal. At this stage, its revival would still respond “strongly to the national security interests” of the United States, it was explained in his entourage.
“Things can go both ways,” Ali Vaez, of the International Crisis Group conflict prevention organization, told AFP. the compromise that is on the table”, or on the contrary cause “another cycle of escalation which will only get worse”.