Diplomats from Iran, the United States and five other powers gathered in Vienna last week to try to revive President Barack Obama’s 2015 deal limiting Tehran’s nuclear activities.
It did not go well.
Iran’s new hard-line government showed up with maximalist demands, insisting the United States lift all its economic sanctions before Tehran takes any steps toward curbing its uranium enrichment.
And the Iranians went further: They said they wanted to reopen draft agreements that their predecessors negotiated only six months ago.
Meanwhile, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency announced that Iran has escalated uranium enrichment at an underground plant in violation of the 2015 deal.
Tehran’s actions drew harsh responses not just from the United States, but also from its European allies.
“Iran right now does not seem to be serious,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Friday.
“Iran has fast-forwarded its nuclear program … [and] backtracked on diplomatic progress,” diplomats from Britain, France and Germany said in a statement.
In undiplomatic terms, Iran shot itself in the foot: It shifted blame for any impasse from the United States to itself.
In doing so, it raised a larger, more ominous question: Does Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, want an agreement at all?
“The Iranians know that compromise will be necessary to make a deal,” said Suzanne DiMaggio, a nuclear arms expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “But it’s unclear whether this new group of hard-liners is willing and able to get there.”
A LITTLE history is in order.
Obama and the leaders of China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany negotiated the 2015 deal to prevent Iran from acquiring the ability to assemble a nuclear weapon. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful, but it has enriched some uranium to a level that is mainly useful as a step toward a bomb.
Under the deal, the United States and other countries promised to lift economic sanctions in exchange for strict limits on Iran’s nuclear activities.
Iran initially complied, closing nuclear facilities and limiting uranium enrichment. But the economic benefits fell short of expectations: Western banks and businesses didn’t flood Tehran with investments.
