The optimism of recent weeks has apparently dissipated: the United States openly raises again the possibility of a failure in the negotiations to save the nuclear agreement with Iran, to the point that it has threatened Tehran with resorting to a plan B with still vague guidelines.
“An agreement of this type is not imminent, nor is there complete certainty, and that is why for much of the year we have prepared ourselves for all hypotheses and for all scenarios,” US diplomacy spokesman Ned Price.
“We have long discussed the alternatives with our allies” in the Middle East and with “our European allies” so “we are quite prepared,” he warned, without specifying the details of a contingency plan.
“The ball is in Tehran’s court, it is up to them to make the decisions that can be considered difficult,” Price declared since the beginning of March, when a commitment between the major powers and Iran to resurrect the 2015 nuclear agreement that would prevent Tehran seemed imminent. Iran acquire the atomic bomb.
That pact made it possible to lift international economic sanctions against Tehran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear activities.
But in 2018, then-President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement, considering it soft.
In response, Tehran stopped enforcing limits on its atomic program.
Since the arrival of Joe Biden in the White House last year, negotiations have been launched to save the agreement and lift US sanctions in exchange for an Iranian return to the pillars of the text.
“All Scenarios”
According to a source close to the issue, Tehran demands the removal of the Revolutionary Guards – the ideological army of the Islamic Republic of Iran – from the US blacklist of “foreign terrorist organizations”, this being one of the key obstacles to closing the compromise.
An ardent supporter of a negotiated solution, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said keeping the “Guardians” on the blacklist “has no practical consequences,” suggesting that Washington can afford such a concession.
But the American right and Israel, hostile to the 2015 deal and also to its revival, turned that condition into a red line.
At the end of 2021, when the talks seemed (already) deadlocked, the United States again began to brandish the threat of “alternative” options
“President Biden promised that as long as he is in power, Iran will not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon,” “deal or no deal,” Ned Price insisted on Monday.
“That is why for much of the year we prepared for all hypotheses, for all scenarios,” including the end of the 2015 agreement, he added on Tuesday, and assured that this possibility was discussed with Washington’s allies in the Middle East and Europe.
Price, however, did not specify the details of a possible contingency plan.
In the fall, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that the United States was considering “all options” in the event of a diplomatic failure, without ruling out the use of force.
