The Biden administration has said it is open to easing sanctions against critical elements of the Iranian economy, including oil and finance, helping to narrow differences in nuclear talks, according to people familiar with the matter.
Despite progress, senior diplomats have warned that difficult weeks of negotiations on the 2015 nuclear deal are coming and progress remains fragile. Vienna talks complicated by Washington-Tehran domestic policy and Iran’s refusal to meet directly with US
President Biden wants to return to the 2015 deal after former President Donald Trump withdrew in 2018. The US decision to drop the deal and impose heavy sanctions on Iran has prompted Tehran to violate many of the key restrictions in the deal, returning to agreement agreement. difficult provisions and limits for both parties.
Senior officials in Vienna concluded five days of talks this week, with delegations returning home before negotiations resume next week. The people involved in the talks say that progress has come, as the US has made clearer the outlines for reducing the sanctions it is willing to offer.
Many of the sanctions were imposed under Mr. Trump using US terrorist authorities, and US officials have previously said they are willing to consider lifting some of them. But they did not elaborate on what sanctions could be eased or which Iranian entities would be affected.
While Iran says it is not trying to build nuclear weapons, a look at its key facilities suggests it could develop the technology to produce them. The WSJ is decomposing Tehran’s capabilities as it reaches new milestones in uranium enrichment and limits access to inspectors. Photo illustration: George Downs
Two people familiar with the issue said the United States is open to lifting terrorist sanctions against Iran’s central bank, national oil and oil companies and several key economic sectors, including steel, aluminum and others. A senior European official said Washington also signaled a possible reduction in sanctions for sectors such as textiles, cars, shipping and insurance, all industries that Iran was destined to win in the 2015 agreement.
Lifting terrorist sanctions against some of those state entities and critical sectors of the economy would act as a significant tonic for the affected economy and represent a large part of the country’s revenue.
US officials in Vienna have highlighted the types of sanctions that have been taken into account, although without offering a detailed proposal, according to people familiar with the matter.
The two sides contradict Iran’s call for the United States to lift its name as a comprehensive “foreign terrorist organization” of Iran’s elite military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The United States is not currently considering lifting terrorist sanctions on the IRGC, said people familiar with the matter.
More on Iran’s Nuclear Program
The US terrorist listing of the office of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei is also likely to be controversial, officials said.
While the Biden administration said it was ready to lift sanctions imposed by Mr. Trump, officials also said it reserved the right to retain some of the actions against Tehran’s support for militant groups and its ballistic missile program.
On Wednesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said US officials seemed serious in their bid to lift sanctions. But he said Washington needs to go beyond generalities and specify exact details.
“In a few steps, I found them serious,” he said. “In some steps, they speak unequivocally. We should see now. “
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, second from the right, visited an exhibition on Iran’s nuclear achievements in Tehran earlier this month.
Photo:
Office of the Iranian Presidency / Associated Press
Iran has reduced its compliance with the 2015 agreement after the Trump administration withdrew, expanding its uranium enrichment operations. An Iranian official said the return to the nuclear deal would put an end to only 800 new sanctions and names of terrorism, about half of the 1,500 that Iran has imposed on its economic sectors, institutions, companies and individuals.
The release of Iran’s complex sanctions network is a politically sticky task for the Biden team. Opposition to a potential deal is growing among Republican critics of the Biden administration. A group of Republican senators is pushing legislation that gives Congress the power to prevent the administration from lifting any of Iran’s sanctions.
Proponents of maintaining sanctions say any exemption would undermine Washington’s leverage to secure a new consolidated agreement, indicating that Tehran’s available foreign exchange reserves have fallen to their lowest point in decades. This figure is offset by an increase in Iranian oil exports since the Biden administration took office, with China taking over much of the new production amid perceptions that Washington is taking a more lenient approach to Iran.
There has also been progress in talks on Iran’s path to compliance with the 2015 agreement, which has been limited to what to do with its three-tonne enriched uranium stockpile and what happens to the advanced machines installed by Tehran to generate faster nuclear fuel.
Officials also said that Iran has moved away from talks to insist that the US lift all sanctions imposed since 2015, when the nuclear deal was implemented. Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Abbas Araghchi, told The Wall Street Journal last week that although Tehran’s request was the end of all sanctions, he was willing to negotiate the request.
Hardliners in Tehran, however, did not publicly agree with Mr Araghchi, creating internal tension that worries Western officials. The English-language television network Press TV on Tuesday quoted an informed source as saying that Iran has not accepted a sequential lifting of sanctions and that Iran will have to check for any improvement in sanctions before reciprocity, which would take up to six months.
The parties to the 2015 agreement, which also includes France, Germany, Russia, China and the United Kingdom, agreed to set up a new group to address a central challenge in the negotiations – agreeing exactly what action the US and Iran should take. and when, regarding the lifting of sanctions and the reversal of violations of the agreement by Iran.
Negotiators also said this week that they had begun drafting potential agreements that could be discussed in future sessions.
Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations Atomic Energy Agency and chief negotiator at the talks, told the newspaper that work has begun on the steps the two sides will need to take to restore the agreement. He said negotiations could be completed by the end of May, when an agreement expires to ensure the International Atomic Energy Agency’s continued oversight of Iran’s nuclear activities.
“I don’t think there are insurmountable obstacles to a deal,” he said.
—Sune Engel Rasmussen contributed to this article.
Write to Ian Talley at [email protected], Benoit Faucon at [email protected] and Laurence Norman at [email protected]
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