US Will Never Allow Iran To Acquire Nukes, Biden Tells Israel's Lapid
President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid Wednesday the United States will never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon, the White House said.
President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid Wednesday the United States will never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon, the White House said.
Israel opposes a return to the 2015 deal, which would lift sanctions on Iran and would limit its nuclear program for a few years.
Former president Donald Trump pulled out of the deal in 2018 and reimposed harsh sanctions, prompting Tehran to violate the pact's nuclear limits. Biden has vowed to revive the agreement while ensuring the security of Israel, Iran's regional arch foe.
"The President underscored US commitment to never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon" in a call in which Biden and Lapid also discussed "threats posed by Iran," the White House said in a statement.
In its own readout of the call, Lapid's office said they "spoke at length about the negotiations on a nuclear agreement, and their shared commitment to stopping Iran’s progress towards a nuclear weapon."
The nuclear deal appeared near revival in March. But indirect talks between Tehran and Washington then broke down over several issues, including Tehran's insistence that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) close its probes into uranium traces found at three undeclared sites before the nuclear pact is revived.
Biden and Lapid in July signed a joint pledge to deny Iran nuclear arms, a show of unity between allies long divided over diplomacy with Tehran. But Lapid said last week that if the 2015 deal is revived, Israel will not be bound by it.
With reporting by Reuters
Speaking Tuesday, the once senior official at the International Atomic Energy Agency, who is close to the United States government, said President Joe Biden had resolved to take the step in advance of November’s mid-term US Congressional elections.
The official said Washington had informed Israel of the decision, and that four Arab states – Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – had been told during Biden’s July Middle East tour that the US would help them develop nuclear technology. While the Israeli leadership has consistently opposed the 2015 agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), Prime Minister Yair Lapid and opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu are vying over the Iranian ‘threat’ as the November 1 parliamentary election approaches.
The former IAEA official gave no indication as to how Iran and the US had resolved the differences over JCPOA restoration that have characterized 16 months of talks, both with five other world powers in Vienna, and bilaterally with European Union mediation.
Leaked information both in Iran and in Israeli media about a proposed European Union plan indicate a broad agreement on many issues, but lingering questions of Iranian demands over “guarantees”, “verification” and a lingering IAEA probe about Iran’s pre-2003 undeclared nuclear activities.
An IAEA report leaked Monday revealed Iran’s latest breach of the JCPOA with the installation at the Natanz nuclear site of additional IR-6 centrifuges, advanced models for enriching uranium barred under the JCPOA.
There have also been consistent reports of differences over enquiries by the IAEA into unexplained uranium traces found at several sites linked to work done by Iran before 2003 but not declared as nuclear-related. While the US and European JCPOA signatories have insisted the IAEA enquiry should go on regardless of what happens with the JCPOA, President Ebrahim Raisi insisted Monday that the JCPOA could be restored only once the IAEA dropped the probe, which Tehran insists results from allegations made for ‘political’ reasons in 2018 by Israel.
Finessing the wording
Earlier Tuesday, Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, criticized “excessive” demands made by the IAEA, while Fereydoun Abbasi, a member of the parliament’s energy committee, said Iran should enrich uranium not just to 60 percent – the highest level reached – but to 90 percent “both for scientific research and for making nuclear fuel for submarines.”
Tehran has made no public response to the latest US input in the nuclear talks, submitted August 24 through the European Union. But there have been reports of efforts to finesse a wording that would postpone the IAEA probe while the JCPOA gradually comes back into play, and IAEA director-general Rafael Mariano Grossi suggested August 23 the uranium traces might be better investigated with the 2015 deal back in place.
There have also been indications of ‘principlist’ politicians in Tehran claiming the US had made significant concessions in the talks process. Real or not, such ‘concessions’ would help suggest Raisi’s government, which took office August 2021 with talks underway, had secured a more favorable outcome than would have been possible under the centrist President Hassan Rouhani, a staunch advocate of the JCPOA.
In comments reported by the ISNA news agency, Behrouz Kamalvandi said Iran’s degree of cooperation with the IAEA, the United Nations agency, had been constrained by parliamentary legislation passed December 2020 to the ‘safeguards’ level required by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
IAEA monitoring would be extended to that required by the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, including implementing the ‘Additional Protocol,’ the spokesman said, once United States sanctions were eased and the 2015 agreement restored.
Kamalvandi’s remarks comes as Iran weighs up the latest US input, submitted August 24 through the European Union, in 16-month talks aimed at restoring the 2015 agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).
One of the challenges in the talks is reportedly a gap between, on one hand, Iran’s expectation that with JCPOA restoration the agency would shelve its enquiries into uranium traces found by inspectors in sites used before 2003 and, on the other hand, the US insistence that Iran must satisfy the IAEA under its NPT commitments regardless of the JCPOA.
Dropping the enquiry?
There have been reports of efforts to finesse a wording that would postpone the matter while the JCPOA gradually comes back into play, and IAEA director-general Rafael Mariano Grossi suggested August 23 the uranium traces might be better investigated with the 2015 deal restored. But Iranian politicians, up to President Ebrahim Raisi, have lately argued forcefully, citing an alleged 2015 precedent, that the agency drop the enquiries before the JCPOA is restored.
As President Joe Biden faces criticisms in the US over his administration’s efforts to revive the JCPOA, from which President Donald Trump withdrew the US in 2018, JCPOA opponents and critics in Tehran have been arguing for a more assertive approach.
Fereydoun Abbasi, a member of the parliament’s energy committee, said Tuesday Iranian negotiators should insist not just on closing “safeguards issues” but on “completely closing” Iran’s case at the agency – possibly referring to the withdrawal of a resolution passed by the 35-nation IAEA board in June censuring Iran over failing to satisfy the agency over the pre-2003 work.
Submarine fuel and political expediency
Abbasi also said Iran should enrich uranium not just to 60 percent – the highest level reached at present – but to 90 percent “both for scientific research and for making nuclear fuel for submarines.” Iran began in 2019 enriching beyond the 3.67 percent cap set by the JCPOA, the year after the US left the 2015 deal and imposed ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions. While there are limited civil uses of 90-per-cent-enriched uranium including research and medical isotopes, Iran has no nuclear submarines and 90 percent is widely considered ‘weapons grade.’
While Raisi has not been generally vocal over the nuclear issue and said during his successful 2021 election campaign he would back JCPOA restoration if in the “peoples’ interests,” many of his supporters have been strong opponents of the 2015 agreement. Given previous president Hassan Rouhani’s close association with the JCPOA, signed during his first term in office, it is politically expedient for some Raisi supporters to argue that a ‘tougher’ approach, including ramping up the nuclear program, has yielded concessions from world powers, particularly the US, that would not have happened with Rouhani still in office.
