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Western powers pledged over the weekend to make efforts to reactivate the Iranian nuclear deal as capitals tightened to leave behind the implications of the election. Ibrahim Raisi, a conservative cleric and head of the judiciary, as president of Iran.
On Sunday, Vienna negotiators postponed talks aimed at restoring the deal. In Brussels, the EU said it was ready to work with the new Iranian government, and insisted that “it is important that intense diplomatic efforts continue to [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] back to normal. “
U.S. officials insisted Sunday that the election of the hardline president had not reduced the Biden administration’s desire to revive Iran’s nuclear pact.
Jake Sullivan, national security adviser to U.S. President Joe Biden, told ABC News: “Our top priority now is to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. We believe diplomacy is the best way to achieve this. “We will negotiate with a clear and firm eye on the Iranians to see if we can reach a result that puts their nuclear program in the box.”
He added that Iran’s supreme leader would be the person who would ultimately decide whether the country would return to the nuclear deal, not the country’s president.
But Naftali Bennett, Israel’s new right-wing prime minister, who took office last week, warned Sunday that it was “the last chance for the world powers to wake up before returning to the nuclear deal and understanding who they are working with.”
At his first cabinet meeting, he added: “These guys are murderers, mass murderers. A regime of brutal hangers should never be allowed to have weapons of mass destruction that allow it not to kill thousands, but millions.
Israel has relentlessly opposed the resurrection of the nuclear deal with Iran. He sees Iran’s hand behind his main opponents in the region: Hamas, the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite faction and the largest political and military force in Lebanon.
Raisi will take office in early August after winning the election on Friday, replacing Hassan Rouhani. Iran has tried to restore the 2015 nuclear deal and free itself from US sanctions. The elections give the leaders of the regime total control of all branches of the state, which generates an additional layer of uncertainty about an already complex process.
Raisi said during his campaign that his government would continue nuclear talks and Iranian analysts say the regime needs to lift sanctions if the incoming president has any chance of fulfilling his promise to alleviate economic hardship in the republic. .
But a regime expert told the FT that tough leaders would want to negotiate on their own terms and that it would not change Tehran’s insistence that Iran’s support for militant groups across the region and the expansion of its program of increasingly sophisticated missiles are not in the negotiation.
Raisi is much more in line with the thinking of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader who has the final say on all key foreign policy and security decisions, than Rouhani, who signed the nuclear deal in 2015. and tried to improve ties with the West.
It is unlikely that a Raisi government will try to cool relations with the United States beyond resolving the nuclear confrontation. Former U.S. President Donald Trump left the deal in 2018 and re-imposed sanctions on Iran.
Since then, Tehran has breached the limits of the uranium enrichment agreement, causing anxiety in European capitals about the prospects of the pact, under which Iran agreed to halt its nuclear program in exchange for lifting many international sanctions.
Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, a visiting member of the European Foreign Relations Council, said the electoral victory should not immediately affect the Vienna negotiations, adding that the re-entry of the United States into the nuclear deal would continue in the strategic interests of Iran.
But he warned that victory would change the trajectory of diplomacy in the medium term. Raisi’s administration is unlikely to pursue a “more for more” agreement, and Raisi’s personal history and possible conduct of his administration could lead to objections to broader negotiations among many in the West, citing concerns about human rights”.
Negotiators for Iran and the six remaining signatories – the EU, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Russia and China – have been searching since April to find out how to restore the agreement and pave the way for the states. United rejoin,
A U.S. State Department spokesman said: “Our policy on Iran is designed to promote the interests of the United States, regardless of who is in power. We would like to take advantage of the significant progress made during the last round. of conversations in Vienna “.
Additional reports from Michael Peel in Brussels
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