WASHINGTON: Western officials have largely lost hope the Iran nuclear deal can be resurrected, sources familiar with the matter said, forcing them to weigh how to limit Iran’s atomic programme even as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has divided the big powers.
While they have not completely given up on the pact, under which Iran restrained its nuclear programme in return for relief from economic sanctions, there is a growing belief it may be beyond salvation.
“They are not yanking the IV out of the patient’s arm ... but I sense little expectation that there is a positive way forward,” said one source.
Four Western diplomats echoed the sentiment that the deal – which Iran struck with Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the US in 2015 but which then-US President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018 – is withering away.
The pact appeared on the brink of revival in early March when the European Union, which co-ordinates the talks, invited ministers to Vienna to seal the deal. But talks were thrown into disarray over last-minute Russian demands and whether Washington might remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from its Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) list.
The IRGC controls elite armed and intelligence forces that Washington accuses of a global terrorist campaign.
Tehran’s demand to remove it from the list is opposed by many US legislators, who see it as a terrorist entity despite Iranian denials.
The Russian demands appear to have been finessed but the IRGC designation has not, with the impending November 8 US mid-term elections making it hard for US President Joe Biden to buck domestic opposition to remove it.
Biden’s aides have made clear they have no plans to drop the IRGC from the list but have not ruled it out, saying if Tehran wants Washington to take such step beyond the strict revival of the deal, named the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) then Iran must address U.S. concerns outside the deal.
“If they’re not prepared to drop extraneous demands, continue to insist on lifting the FTO, and refuse to address our concerns that go beyond the JCPOA then, yes, we’re going to reach an impasse that is probably not going to be surmountable,” said a senior US official.
“Is it dead? We don’t know yet and frankly we don’t think Iran knows either,” the official said.
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