On Thursday, months-old indirect negotiations over Tehran’s shattered nuclear agreement were restarted by negotiators from Iran, the United States, and the European Union. However, international inspectors have shown that the Islamic Republic is growing its uranium enrichment.
The abrupt Wednesday request for the Vienna talks to resume seemed to exclude high-level participation from all of the nations that were a part of Iran’s 2015 agreement with international powers.
The talks take place as Western officials voice growing doubts about the likelihood of reaching an agreement to restore the treaty. The chief diplomat for the EU has issued a warning, stating that “the room for more meaningful compromises has been exhausted.”
According to Iranian media, Iran’s chief negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, met with EU mediator Enrique Mora. The U.S. won’t deal with Iran directly, as it has in prior negotiations. The two parties will communicate through Mora instead.
Additionally present, Rob Malley, the U.S. special representative for Iran, tweeted on Wednesday that “our expectations are in control.”
Mikhail Ulyanov, the Russian ambassador who has advocated Moscow’s interests in the negotiations, also met with Mora on Thursday. Ulyanov also separately met with Bagheri Kani.
“As always we had a frank, pragmatic and constructive exchange of views on ways and means of overcoming the last outstanding issues,” Ulyanov wrote on Twitter.
But Iran presented a maximalist position before the talks even began. Tehran denied that it had given up trying to have America remove its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard from the list of terrorist organizations as a condition of a settlement through its state-run IRNA news agency. That has been the main issue.
IRNA also cited Iran’s civilian nuclear leader as saying that the International Atomic Energy Agency’s shuttered security cameras would only be put back on if the West gave up trying to look into human-made uranium traces discovered at hitherto unreported places in the nation.
These stances might endanger the negotiations.
Iranian authorities have been attempting to present upbeat views of the talks while at the same time blaming the United States for the impasse. They might be concerned that if the talks break down, the rial, the nation’s currency, could plunge to new lows.
Iran and the United States, France, Germany, Britain, Russia, and China reached a nuclear agreement in 2015. The deal saw Iran agree to limit its enrichment of uranium under the watch of U.N. inspectors in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Then-President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the U.S. out of the accord in 2018, saying he would negotiate a stronger deal, but that didn’t happen. Iran began breaking the deal’s terms a year later.
Iran maintains a stockpile of about 3,800 kilograms (8,370 pounds) of enriched uranium as per the most recent IAEA count that was made public. For nonproliferation specialists, Iran’s ability to enrich uranium to a previously unheard-of 60 percent purity is even more concerning. That is only a small, technological step away from 90% weapons-grade levels.
According to those analysts, Iran has enough 60 percent enriched uranium to make at least one bomb’s worth of fuel. Iran would still need to create a bomb and a means of delivering it, which would probably take several months to complete.
Although Iran’s authorities increasingly talk about the country’s ability to construct a nuclear bomb if it so chooses, the topic was previously taboo there, the country insists that its program is for peaceful purposes.
In the meantime, on Thursday, U.N. inspectors at the IAEA said that they had confirmed that Iran had started pumping uranium gas into two IR-1 cascades at its subterranean Natanz facility that had previously been idle. Up to 5% of uranium will be enhanced by those cascades.
The IAEA inspectors also confirmed that Iran had finished constructing three advanced IR-6 cascades, each containing up to 176 centrifuges, at the facility. Those cascades hadn’t yet been fed uranium, according to the IAEA. Inspectors said that Iran also informed the IAEA that it intended to add six more IR-2M cascades to a new operating unit at Natanz.