The Biden administration’s push to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal hit fresh snags Wednesday as Tehran recalled its top negotiator from multiparty talks while the spiraling Ukraine crisis continued to strain negotiations that struggled for months to gain steam.
The White House has said the talks in Vienna — which include representatives from the U.S., Iran, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and China — were in their “final stages,” but Tehran’s move suggests a breakthrough may not be imminent.
U.S.-Russian friction over Ukraine has threatened to undermine whatever momentum was taking hold in the talks. Analysts questioned the extent to which Russia could try to exploit the negotiations to damage President Biden’s stature on the world stage.
The Cold War-era adversaries sat awkwardly on the same side of the high-stakes negotiating table in recent months in what appeared to be an attempt to revive the Obama-era deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program.
The prospect of such cooperation appears likely to evaporate after the Biden administration’s imposition this week of massive economic sanctions to punish Russia for invading Ukraine. Russian officials warned the U.S. on Wednesday of a “finely tuned and painful” response to the sanctions as fears grew that the Kremlin would spark a massive ground war in Eastern Europe.
Regardless of the eventual outcome, the Biden administration’s desire to push a compartmentalized approach to foreign policy is on full display. Analysts say negotiators face a major test as the Iran talks play out in Vienna while Russian troops defy American warnings and move into Ukraine.
Administration officials have stressed that the U.S. can and must work with adversaries such as Russia and China on issues like the Iran deal and climate change even while opposing them on other crucial matters, including the very survival of Ukraine as an independent state.
Some foreign policy experts say the rapidly unfolding Ukraine crisis should prove to the administration exactly who it’s dealing with in Vienna. While it may be in Moscow’s strategic interests to resurrect the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Russia’s motivations are far different from those of the United States.
One motivation may be to weaken and embarrass the U.S.
“I think the Ukraine crisis should be a wake-up call for the administration about the Russians … and the kind of actor Russia is on the world stage,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which closely tracks the Iran deal.
“When you look ultimately at the Russian desire for a restoration of the JCPOA … Russia is doing so because it wants America to be seen as the supplicant. It wants America to have to pay a price for the time it took off of the deal,” he said, referring to the years since President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the nuclear agreement in 2018.
“While both sides may talk about the JCPOA, in reality the JCPOA is a proxy for some fundamentally different things that both Washington and Moscow are trying to achieve,” Mr. Taleblu said.
The U.S. and its Western allies have stressed that a nuclear-armed Iran would be a grave danger to the region, especially Israel. President Obama and now Mr. Biden have argued that economic sanctions relief to Iran is worth the limits of uranium enrichment and other key aspects of a program to build nuclear bombs.
Analysts say Russia also has a stake in regional security and preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
Mr. Taleblu argued that Moscow hopes to use the nuclear talks as a way to diminish U.S. global standing by creating a dynamic showing Mr. Biden and his diplomats publicly begging Iran to agree to a deal.
Russia also would benefit from the lifting of U.S. sanctions reimposed on Iran when Mr. Trump pulled Washington out of the agreement because Moscow would be permitted to sell weapons directly to Iran.
The negotiating has grown more complex because of the situation in Ukraine.
Russian officials said this week that their actions in Ukraine will have virtually no impact on the Iran talks. The head of Russia’s delegation to the Vienna talks, Mikhail Ulyanov, told Russia’s state-run Tass news agency on Tuesday that the two issues have “nothing to do with” each other.
“The talks in Vienna are proceeding routinely,” Mr. Ulyanov said. “Russia is playing a significant role in this process. The talks are nearing completion.”
As the talks drag on, the Biden administration has faced stiff resistance from Republicans on Capitol Hill who say a renewed Iran nuclear deal would embolden the theocratic regime in Tehran, which finances terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and backs militias that target U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria.
Israel also has ramped up its public lobbying against the deal. It said the rumored terms of the agreement wouldn’t be strong enough to contain Iran.
“The emerging deal, as it seems, is highly likely to create a more violent, more volatile Middle East,” Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in a speech this week.
It appeared last week that a return to the Iran nuclear agreement or a similar deal was imminent. State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters that the negotiations had reached their final stages.
Iranian officials expressed a similarly optimistic outlook, but the prospects of a deal seemed to take a major hit Wednesday. Reuters reported that Iran recalled its top negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, to Tehran, suggesting an agreement isn’t likely to be finalized in the immediate future.
“There has been very good progress in the talks, but now the ball is in the other party’s court. It is time for the other party’s political decisions. Our country’s fate is not linked to this deal,” Reuters quoted an unidentified Iranian official as saying.
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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