About 90 percent of the work on the Iran nuclear deal has been done, but the 10 percent that remains might prove a tough nut to crack. That’s according to the permanent representative of Russia at Vienna international organizations.
In an interview for Russian business daily Kommersant, Mikhail Ulyanov said that some politically sensitive issues remain and have yet to be settled by the negotiators. This includes the question of whether the United States could again pull out of the deal under different leadership.
Ulyanov noted that the U.S. side had said it could not provide guarantees that would not happen because of its legislation. According to him, however, the guarantee is pretty obvious: if one side, he said, begins to “misbehave”, the other side would have the right to respond in kind. For instance, if the United States were to pull out of the deal, Iran would recommence enriching uranium.
Ulyanov declined to name other examples of the politically sensitive issues that are holding the deal back but noted that right now there is no clarity even about when the negotiations would resume. Iran, he said, is settling in under new leadership after the June elections; even the Iranians don’t know when the negotiations might resume. This is naturally annoying for the other sides on the negotiations table, Ulyanov added.
This situation led the United States and France to warn Iran against drawing out the negotiations, with Radio Free Europe citing unnamed diplomats as saying that the negotiations could deteriorate unless Iran granted an extension to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s permit to monitor nuclear activities.
This extension has yet to take place.
This is the latest sign that Iran’s return to international oil markets would be tougher than it looked at the start of negotiations. It would be tougher still under the new hardline Iranian leadership.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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I don’t think the United States will give guarantees that it wouldn’t walk away from a new nuclear deal since it considers its prerogative as a superpower to walk away from any agreement it signs without batting an eye lid.
Examples abound. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the late former US president George HW Bush promised the Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO will neither position its forces close to the Russian borders nor would recruit the former republics of the Soviet Union to join NATO. But the United States reneged on its promises and supported an EU-prompted coup d’etat against the legitimately elected President of Ukraine aimed at bringing the Ukraine into the EU and later into NATO. President Putin’s response was to occupy the Crimea and bring it back to the motherland.
The United States promised the late Saddam Hussein that it won’t interfere in the conflict between Iraq and Kuwait over the giant Rumaila oil field on the border between the two countries and ended up invading Iraq to get its hands on its great oil wealth. Trump walked away from the UN Security Council-approved Iran nuclear deal to please Israel. So Iran is absolutely right not to trust the word of the United States.
I have repeatedly been saying that a lifting of US sanctions against Iran will never see the light of day even by 2023 or ever. The reason is that the positions of the United States and Iran are irreconcilable.
Dr Mamdouh G Salameh
International Oil Economist
Visiting Professor of Energy Economics at ESCP Europe Business School, London
I don’t think the United States will give guarantees that it wouldn’t walk away from a new nuclear deal since it considers its prerogative as a superpower to walk away from any agreement it signs without batting an eye lid.
Examples abound. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the late former US president George HW Bush promised the Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO will neither position its forces close to the Russian borders nor would recruit the former republics of the Soviet Union to join NATO. But the United States reneged on its promises and supported an EU-prompted coup d’etat against the legitimately elected President of Ukraine aimed at bringing the Ukraine into the EU and later into NATO. President Putin’s response was to occupy the Crimea and bring it back to the motherland.
The United States promised the late Saddam Hussein that it won’t interfere in the conflict between Iraq and Kuwait over the giant Rumaila oil field on the border between the two countries and ended up invading Iraq to get its hands on its great oil wealth. Trump walked away from the UN Security Council-approved Iran nuclear deal to please Israel. So Iran is absolutely right not to trust the word of the United States.
I have repeatedly been saying that a lifting of US sanctions against Iran will never see the light of day even by 2023 or ever. The reason is that the positions of the United States and Iran are irreconcilable.
Dr Mamdouh G Salameh
International Oil Economist
Visiting Professor of Energy Economics at ESCP Europe Business School, London