Can America and Iran revive their nuclear deal?
THE GRAND HOTEL on Viennas Ringstrasse, the citys elegant boulevard, is a felicitous spot for nuclear diplomacy. It is not just the opulent surroundings or the unlimited coffee. The hotel was also the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency ( IAEA ), the worlds nuclear watchdog, for 22 years. Yet the diplomats that have gathered there for six rounds of talks since April, most recently on June 20th, have had little luck so far. And time may be running short. America and Iranindirectly, via Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the European Unionare discussing how to revive the multinational nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ( JCPOA ), that was signed in 2015 and abandoned by President Donald Trump three years later. In response to American sanctions, Iran has steadily breached the deals provisions on nuclear activity by testing advanced centrifuges and accumulating enriched uranium, among other proscribed steps. The IAEA estimated in May that Iran had produced over 3,000kg of uranium enriched up to 5% purity (see chart), enough for several bombs if enriched further. Over 70kg is now also enriched to over 20%, which is most of the way to weapons-grade. Over the past year, America and Iran have each said that they are willing to return to the terms of the original deal if the other does so, too. We think almost all the agreement documents are ready, said Irans deputy foreign minister after the latest round. There is a new level of optimism, enthused the EUs envoy to the UN on June 30th. Russias foreign ministry reckons that a deal may be done by July 14th, the JCPOA s sixth anniversary. And yet reinstating the original terms is not as easy as it sounds, since circumstances have changed so much since the deal was first agreed. It does not help that Iran is in the midst of a political transition. Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline nationalist, is due to replace Hassan Rouhani, a pragmatist, as president on August 3rd, following a rigged election last month. Mr Raisi and those around him are more hostile to America and the West than the current government. That does not mean a deal is impossibleit was, after all, another hardliner, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mr Rouhanis predecessor, who began the talks that eventually led to the JCPOA . But Mr Raisis election does complicate things. Mr Rouhanis government has very little incentive to devote its last month in office to frantic diplomacy, says Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi of the Royal United Services Institute, a British think-tank. Any political rewards would be distant, since the next electionfor Irans parliament (the majlis)is not due for three years. Nor is there any guarantee that the new government will fully implement any deal it inherits, says Dr Tabrizi. Irans domestic politics is not the only hurdle in the way of an agreement. We still have serious differences that have not been bridged, warned a senior American official speaking anonymously to reporters on June 24th. Whether its the nuclear steps that Iran needs to take to come back into compliance, the sanctions relief that the US will be offering, or the sequence of steps that both sides would be taking.  Sequencing is no longer the obstacle it once was. Both sides accept that they could return to the deal in a series of concurrent steps rather than waiting for the other to do everything first. But the other challenges remain. Iran has said that it wants America to remove all sanctions imposed by Mr Trump. America retorts that it will only lift those covered by the terms of the JCPOA . Indeed in March the Biden administration actually imposed new sanctions on two members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ( IRGC ) for human-rights abuses. It is those sorts of sanctions, economically inconsequential but highly politically sensitive, that are most challenging, says Henry Rome of the Eurasia Group, a consultancy. They include Americas labelling of the IRGC as a terrorist group, and sanctions against the supreme leader, Irans military command and Mr Raisi himself. Then on June 30th Majid Takht Ravanchi, Irans ambassador to the UN, said that the country wanted assurances that...the US will not, once again, withdraw from the JCPOA , in order to avoid spooking potential investors. American officials say that it would be impossible to provide such certainty, not least because the JCPOA could not be turned into a binding treaty without support from two-thirds of Americas senators. Republicans, who make up half the Senate, have bitterly opposed the deal from the start. In any case, Mr Trump also showed that a president could easily walk away from even long-standing treaties. There is no such thing as a guarantee, said the American official, even before Mr Ravanchis comments, and I think Iran knows it and we know it.  Western countries have their own complaints. They argue that although Iran has portrayed its breaches of the deal as remedial and reversible, it has also gained valuable and permanent knowledge by, among other things, operating advanced centrifuges and manufacturing uranium metal (the solid form used in reactors or bombs, as opposed to the gaseous compound used during enrichment). The original JCPOA was supposed to defer such activity to later years, thus slowing Irans nuclear progress. America now wants Iran to agree to follow-on talks that would not only extend the deals provisionsdelaying the date when Iran could legitimately install advanced centrifuges, for examplebut also cover non-nuclear issues, such as Irans ballistic missiles and support for militant groups in the region. Mr Raisi says its missiles and support for militias are non-negotiable. The impasse is especially dangerous because Iran is determined to build up its leverage not only by steadily expanding its nuclear activity, thus shrinking the time that it would take to build a bomb, but also by threatening to make its programme less transparent. In February, Iran repudiated several of the JCPOA s tough inspection provisions, such as the installation of cameras at nuclear sites, but promptly agreed to a temporary technical understanding with the IAEA to preserve some access. Those stop-gap measures were renewed twice but expired on June 24th, days after the conclusion of talks in Vienna. Irans government says it has yet to decide whether to extend themand hints that it might delete the data on cameras. The intention seems to be to make America sweat, but in practice Iran is eroding trust. On July 1st Reuters, a news agency, reported that Iran had also restricted the IAEA s access to Natanz, its main enrichment site, following suspected Israeli sabotage there in April.