The Western powers negotiating a new nuclear deal with Iran in Vienna say they’re close to an agreement. But Russia, who will play a key role in the deal, wants guarantees that Ukraine sanctions won’t interfere with its ability to do business with Iran.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made the demands on Saturday as international sanctions were spreading around the world.
Still to be determined in direct talks between Washington and Tehran are exactly which sanctions will be lifted and in what order. There are also details to be ironed out on how to transfer Iran’s nuclear material to Russia.
Wall Street Journal:
It had always been understood that Russia’s specific role within the 2015 nuclear deal would need to be protected from sanctions. That includes receiving enriched uranium from Iran and exchanging it for yellowcake, work to turn Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility into a research center and other nuclear-specific deliveries to Tehran’s facilities.
However, Mr. Lavrov appeared to demand far more sweeping guarantees that could introduce major loopholes in the tight financial, economic and energy sanctions the West has imposed in recent days because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Making Iran a partner in Russia’s sanction-skirting makes sense for Moscow. Iran is a market for Russian expertise in energy and telecommunications — two areas Iran desperately needs to upgrade. Iran is also a big potential customer for Russian arms.
So it’s going to depend on how badly the Western powers want to hurt Russia. Will they do it at the expense of a nuclear deal that has no chance of putting the Iranian nuclear genie back in the bottle?
A senior Western diplomat said the last-minute demand from Russia could make it impossible to complete a return to the 2015 nuclear deal in time.
“We need a guarantee that these sanctions will not in any way touch the regime of trade-economic and investment relations which is laid down in the” nuclear deal, Mr. Lavrov told reporters on Saturday.
“We have asked for a written guarantee…that the current process triggered by the United States does not in any way damage our right to free and full trade, economic and investment cooperation and military-technical cooperation with the Islamic State.”
Perhaps if the West gets lucky, the new nuclear deal will die a quiet death and the Western powers will go home empty-handed. Biden and the Europeans would see that as a failure. But given Iran’s potential for aggression in the Middle East and beyond, handing them tens of billions of dollars to modernize their army — with Russian weapons — makes the failure of the talks a godsend.
Source: PJ Media
