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Iranian Officials Defend Their Approach to Vienna Talks

The foreign minister said Tehran participated in the talks with seriousness and good will and will not seek Plan B while sitting at the negotiating table
Iranian Officials Defend Their Approach to Vienna Talks
Iranian Officials Defend Their Approach to Vienna Talks

Iranian officials defended their approach to the Vienna talks following American and European assertions that the proposals they presented at the negotiations to revive the Iran nuclear deal last week were so overreaching that western negotiators doubt Iran intends to return to the deal.
“The claim by some western parties that Iran has had maximalist demands is unfounded,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told journalists in a briefing on Monday.
“We participated in the talks with seriousness and good will and won’t seek Plan B while sitting at the negotiating table,” the top diplomat said.
While the Biden administration says it prefers that the US and Iran can still reach an understanding on a mutual return to full compliance with the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, that Trump quit in 2018, “we are preparing for a world where, due to Iran’s actions, there is no JCPOA to return,” a senior US diplomat told the Diplomatic news website on Monday.

 

A US official said Washington’s preference is for the US and Iran to be able to reach a diplomatic understanding soon in Vienna on a mutual return to full compliance with the JCPOA


The parties are expected to return to Vienna on Thursday.
In the meantime, lead Iranian nuclear negotiator, Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Baqeri, traveled to Moscow on Tuesday for consultations, IRNA reported.
Of particular concern to western negotiators are that Iran last week, during the first Vienna talks in over five months, began to use advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium to 20% purity at the underground Fordow facility.
American officials contend that while the new Iranian administration stalled for over five months to return to talks on reviving the nuclear deal, it was ramping up higher level 20% and 60% enrichment and the use of advanced centrifuges to accumulate leverage to try to extract more concessions in the talks. Then, when they came to the table last week, they had revised a draft understanding crafted over six previous rounds of talks last spring to, as claimed by the US official, “pocket all the tentative western concessions on sanctions removal, ask for more, and walk back almost all the tentative Iranian concessions” on rolling back their nuclear program.

 

 

Perceived Policy 

“I think, at a minimum, they believe that they could accumulate more enriched uranium at higher levels and use more advanced centrifuges as leverage for a deal that they think they could extract more from us and give less [on] their part,” a senior State Department official told journalists in a background call on the Vienna talks on Saturday, referring to the Iranians. “And that’s not a negotiating tactic that’s going to work.  I’d argue it’s a negotiating tactic that’s going to backfire.”
“I think in general the Iranians have made a number of improvements in their nuclear capacity since the US pulled out of the JCPOA, the most meaningful of which is the accumulation of stockpiles of 20% and 60% enriched uranium, and greater expertise on the use of advanced centrifuges,” a second senior US official, speaking not for attribution, told the Diplomatic.
“The Fordow move combines the accumulation of 20% enriched uranium and the use of advanced IR-6 centrifuges in a facility that is difficult to target,” he said.
CIA Director Bill Burns, speaking at a Wall Street Journal event Monday, said his agency has seen no evidence that Iran has made a decision to produce a nuclear weapon.
Burns spoke as Israeli Mossad director David Barnea was reported to be in Washington discussing Israeli intelligence on Iran with US counterparts, to be joined later this week by Israeli minister of military affairs Benny Gantz.
The first US official, from the State Department, said the US preference is for the US and Iran to be able to reach a diplomatic understanding soon in Vienna on a mutual return to full compliance with the JCPOA. But he said, if Iran is not engaging seriously, talks can coincide with continued, and tightened sanctions and other measures.
 

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