Sixteen months into EU-brokered talks in Vienna on restoring the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, repudiated by Donald Trump in 2018, negotiators are said to be wrestling with a final draft text of an agreement. There is a concern that if the talks stall now they will collapse, but Tehran is understood to have sent its formal response to the draft to the EU and US last week. The EU’s foreign policy chief has described that response as “reasonable”, and there is optimism that a deal may be imminent.
While US briefers suggest a deal is close and that Iran has made important concessions, its diplomats were also reported over the weekend to be engaged in lobbying to reassure Israel that there is no watering down of Tehran’s obligations. Washington argues that Tehran will have to significantly dismantle elements of its nuclear programme built up since 2018. Israel has made clear it is unconvinced and continues to threaten its own pre-emptive attack should Iran develop its nuclear capacity.
It is not clear whether Iran has held to one of its key demands: that the deal include a mechanism by which Tehran would be compensated if a future US president again pulls out. Iran does appear, however, to have removed one major precondition by dropping its insistence that the International Atomic Energy Agency close its investigation of undeclared nuclear material found at Iranian sites in 2019. The US says Iran has also officially dropped its longtime demand that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps be removed from the State Department’s list of “foreign terrorist organisations”.
That demand was dropped months ago, Iranian officials say. Diplomats report that Tehran has asked for some marginal changes to the final text – changes that remain problematic for the US, not least because it fears small concessions may lead Iran to conclude the text is not final and open the door for more demands. With both sides playing a game of brinkmanship, the future of the deal and regional peace hangs in the balance.