VIENNA: Talks to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers were mired in uncertainty on Sunday following Russia’s demands for a US guarantee that the sanctions it faces over the Ukraine conflict will not hurt its trade with Tehran.
Moscow threw the potential spanner in the works on Saturday, just as months of indirect talks between Tehran and Washington in Vienna appeared to be headed for an agreement, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying the Western sanctions over Ukraine had become a stumbling block for the nuclear deal.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken sought to dispel talk of such obstacles on Sunday when he said that the sanctions imposed on Russia over Ukraine had nothing to do with a potential nuclear deal with Iran.
“These things are totally different and just are not, in any way, linked together. So I think that’s irrelevant,” Blinken said in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” show. He added that a potential deal with Iran was close, but cautioned that a couple of very challenging remaining issues were unresolved.
Yet a senior Iranian official told Reuters earlier that Tehran was waiting for clarification from Moscow about the comments from Lavrov, who said Russia wanted a written US guarantee that Russia’s trade, investment and military-technical cooperation with Iran would not be hindered in any way by the sanctions.
“It is necessary to understand clearly what Moscow wants. If what they demand is related to the JCPOA, it would not be difficult to find a solution for it,” said the Iranian official, referring to the 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
“But it will be complicated, if the guarantees that Moscow has demanded, are beyond the JCPOA.”
British, French and German diplomats who had flown home before Lavrov’s comments to brief officials on the nuclear talks have not indicated when they might return to Vienna.
Henry Rome, Iran analyst at consultancy Eurasia group, said reviving the nuclear pact without Russia was “tricky but probably doable, at least in the near term.”
“If Russia continues to obstruct the talks, I think the other parties and Iran will have no choice but to think creatively about ways to get the deal done without Moscow’s involvement,” Rome told Reuters.
On Sunday, Iranian negotiators met EU diplomat Enrique Mora, who coordinates the talks between Tehran and world powers.
Since the election of Iran’s hard-line president Ebrahim Raisi last year, senior officials have been pushing for deeper ties with Russia.
Iran’s top authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, has publicly and privately been calling for closer ties with Russia due to his deep mistrust of the United States.
The 2015 agreement, between Iran and the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Russia and Chin, eased sanctions on Tehran in return for limiting Iran’s enrichment of uranium, making it harder for Tehran to develop material for nuclear weapons. The accord fell apart after President Donald Trump withdrew the United States in 2018.
The return of Iranian oil would help replace Russian barrels lost as the United States and its allies seeks to freeze out Moscow ,following the invasion and soften the impact on the West which is already struggling with high inflation.
US negotiator Robert Malley has suggested that securing the nuclear pact is unlikely unless Tehran frees four US citizens, including Iranian-American father and son Baquer and Siamak Namazi.
A senior Iranian official in Tehran said if Tehran’s demands are met the prisoners issue can be resolved with or without a revival of the nuclear deal.
Iran, which does not recognize dual nationality, denies US accusations that it takes prisoners to gain diplomatic leverage. In recent years, the elite Revolutionary Guards have arrested dozens of dual nationals and foreigners, mostly on espionage and security-related charges.
Tehran has sought the release of over a dozen Iranians in the United States, including seven Iranian-American dual nationals, two Iranians with permanent US residency and four Iranian citizens with no legal status in the United States.
Iranian nuclear talks clouded by Russian demands
https://arab.news/9vxhh
Iranian nuclear talks clouded by Russian demands
- Russian FM Sergei Lavrov said that Western sanctions over Ukraine had become a stumbling block for the nuclear deal
- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken: ‘These things are totally different and just are not, in any way, linked together’
Russian minister visits Cuba as Trump ramps up pressure on Havana
- The Russian embassy in Havana said the minister would “hold a series of bilateral meetings” while in Cuba
HAVANA: Russia’s interior minister began a visit to ally Cuba on Tuesday, a show of solidarity after US President Donald Trump warned that the island’s longtime communist government “is ready to fall.”
Trump this month warned Havana to “make a deal,” the nature of which he did not divulge, or pay a price similar to Venezuela, whose leader Nicolas Maduro was ousted by US forces in a January 3 bombing raid that killed dozens of people.
Venezuela was a key ally of Cuba and a critical supplier of oil and money, which Trump has vowed to cut off.
“We in Russia regard this as an act of unprovoked armed aggression against Venezuela,” Russia’s Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev told Russian state TV Rossiya-1 of the US actions after landing in Cuba.
“This act cannot be justified in any way and once again proves the need to increase vigilance and consolidate all efforts to counter external factors,” he added.
The Russian embassy in Havana said the minister would “hold a series of bilateral meetings” while in Cuba.
Russia and Cuba, both under Western sanctions, have intensified their relations since 2022, with an isolated Moscow seeking new friends and trading partners since its invasion of Ukraine.
Cuba needs all the help it can get as it grapples with its worst economic crisis in decades and now added pressure from Washington.
Trump has warned that acting President Delcy Rodriguez will pay “a very big price” if she does not toe Washington’s line — specifically on access to Venezuela’s oil and loosening ties with US foes Cuba, Russia, China and Iran.
On Tuesday, Russia’s ambassador to Havana, Victor Koronelli, wrote on X that Kolokoltsev was in Cuba “to strengthen bilateral cooperation and the fight against crime.”
The US chief of mission in Cuba, Mike Hammer, meanwhile, met the head of the US Southern Command in Miami on Tuesday “to discuss the situation in Cuba and the Caribbean,” the embassy said on X.
The command is responsible for American forces operating in Central and South America that have carried out seizures of tankers transporting Venezuelan oil and strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats.
- Soldiers killed -
Cuba has been a thorn in the side of the United States since the revolution that swept communist Fidel Castro to power in 1959.
Havana and Moscow were close communist allies during the Cold War, but that cooperation was abruptly halted in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet bloc.
The deployment of Soviet nuclear missile sites on the island triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when Washington and Moscow came close to war.
During his first presidential term, Trump walked back a detente with Cuba launched by his predecessor Barack Obama.
Thirty-two Cuban soldiers, some of them assigned to Maduro’s security detail, were killed in the US strikes that saw the Venezuelan strongman whisked away in cuffs to stand trial in New York.
Kolokoltsev attended a memorial for the fallen men on Tuesday.
