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Iran Delegation Kicks Off Consultations In Vienna Ahead of Monday’s Official Talks

Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said there had been no progress in talks with Tehran to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. JOE KLAMAR AFP/File
Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said there had been no progress in talks with Tehran to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. JOE KLAMAR AFP/File
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Iran Delegation Kicks Off Consultations In Vienna Ahead of Monday’s Official Talks

Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said there had been no progress in talks with Tehran to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. JOE KLAMAR AFP/File
Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said there had been no progress in talks with Tehran to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. JOE KLAMAR AFP/File

An Iranian delegation headed by Ali Bagheri Kani Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs arrived in the Austrian capital and began preliminary talks 48 hours before the resumption of negotiations between Tehran and major powers to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement.

Discussions over the nuclear deal, which will kick off on Monday, will be headed by the European Union, in the presence of delegations from France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China. The US delegation, chaired by Special Envoy to Iran Robert Malley, will be outside the direct negotiating room, similar to the six previous rounds, at the request of Iran.

State-run ISNA news agency stated that the first round of talks between the parties to the nuclear agreement following the election of President Ibrahim Raisi “will be held at the level of deputy foreign ministers,” pointing to Tehran’s insistence on “lifting all the sanctions” in order to return to the negotiating table.

Iranian news sites reported that the negotiating team includes 40 people, including the deputy governor of the Central Bank, and representatives of the ministries of economy and trade. It was not clear whether the Iranian experts and officials, who attended the last six rounds, will be present at Monday’s talks.

Permanent Russian Envoy to International Organizations Mikhail Ulyanov tweeted that informal bilateral consultations began in Vienna in preparation for the resumption of official talks. The Russian official pointed out that reviving the nuclear agreement “requires a great effort.”

“If the opposing parties are willing to return to their full commitments and lift the sanctions, it will be possible to reach a good agreement, even an immediate one,” Iranian Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said in a telephone conversation with EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell.

“Iran wants a good, verifiable agreement,” and it will attend the talks “in good faith,” he added.

In turn, Borrell wrote on Twitter that he told Abdollahian that getting the nuclear deal back on track was more urgent than ever.

His call came after the United States and its allies - France, Germany and Britain - issued an explicit warning to Tehran, saying that if Iran’s non-cooperation is not immediately addressed... the Council will have no choice but to re-convene in an extraordinary session before the end of the year to deal with the crisis.

The Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, said following a visit to Tehran on Monday that no progress had been made on a number of issues.

“In terms of the substance... we were not able to make progress,” he told reporters, saying that the lack of agreement had come “in spite of my best efforts”.

Grossi had sought to tackle constraints put on IAEA inspections earlier this year, outstanding questions over the presence of undeclared nuclear material at sites in Iran, and the treatment of IAEA staff in the country.

Parallel to the tension between Iran and the IAEA, Israel escalated its rhetoric, threatening to resort to a military strike.

On Thursday evening, Israel’s Channel 12 revealed a British intelligence report, which until recently was only available to senior Western intelligence officials, indicating that Iran has enough enriched uranium to develop a bomb within a month.

The channel quoted a senior Israeli official as saying that Tehran accumulated invaluable knowledge, and thus the agreements signed with it became devoid of content. But he noted that Iran currently lacks a design for a warhead that is small enough to be affixed atop any of its arsenal of ballistic missiles, which will take them two other years to develop.

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How Likely Is the Use of Nuclear Weapons by Russia?

This photograph taken at a forensic expert center in an undisclosed location in Ukraine on November 24, 2024, shows parts of a missile that were collected for examination at the impact site in the town of Dnipro following an attack on November 21. (Photo by Roman PILIPEY / AFP)
This photograph taken at a forensic expert center in an undisclosed location in Ukraine on November 24, 2024, shows parts of a missile that were collected for examination at the impact site in the town of Dnipro following an attack on November 21. (Photo by Roman PILIPEY / AFP)
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How Likely Is the Use of Nuclear Weapons by Russia?

This photograph taken at a forensic expert center in an undisclosed location in Ukraine on November 24, 2024, shows parts of a missile that were collected for examination at the impact site in the town of Dnipro following an attack on November 21. (Photo by Roman PILIPEY / AFP)
This photograph taken at a forensic expert center in an undisclosed location in Ukraine on November 24, 2024, shows parts of a missile that were collected for examination at the impact site in the town of Dnipro following an attack on November 21. (Photo by Roman PILIPEY / AFP)

On 24 February 2022, in a televised speech heralding the Russian invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin issued what was interpreted as a threat to use nuclear weapons against NATO countries should they interfere.

“Russia will respond immediately,” he said, “and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history.”

Then on 27 February 2022, Putin ordered Russia to move nuclear forces to a “special mode of combat duty’, which has a significant meaning in terms of the protocols to launch nuclear weapons from Russia.”

Dr. Patricia Lewis, director of the International Security program at Chatham House, wrote in a report that according to Russian nuclear weapons experts, Russia’s command and control system cannot transmit launch orders in peacetime, so increasing the status to “combat” allows a launch order to go through and be put into effect.

She said Putin made stronger nuclear threats in September 2022, following months of violent conflict and gains made by a Ukrainian counterattack.

“He indicated a stretch in Russian nuclear doctrine, lowering the threshold for nuclear weapons use from an existential threat to Russia to a threat to its territorial integrity,” Lewis wrote.

In November 2022, according to much later reports, the US and allies detected manoeuvres that suggested Russian nuclear forces were being mobilized.

Lewis said that after a flurry of diplomatic activity, China’s President Xi Jinping stepped in to calm the situation and speak against the use of nuclear weapons.

In September 2024, Putin announced an update of the 2020 Russian nuclear doctrine. The update was published on 19 November 2024 and formally reduced the threshold for nuclear weapons use.

According to Lewis, the 2020 doctrine said that Russia could use nuclear weapons “in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies, as well as in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy.”

On 21 November 2024, Russia attacked Dnipro in Ukraine using a new ballistic missile for the first time.

She said Putin announced the missile as the ‘Oreshnik’, which is understood to be a nuclear-capable, intermediate-range ballistic missile which has a theoretical range of below 5,500km.

Lewis added that Russia has fired conventionally armed nuclear-capable missiles at Ukraine throughout the war, but the Oreshnik is much faster and harder to defend against, and suggests an escalatory intent by Russia.

Nuclear Response During Cold War

In her report, Lewis said that nuclear weapons deterrence was developed in the Cold War primarily on the basis of what was called ‘mutually assured destruction’ (MAD).

The idea behind MAD is that the horror and destruction from nuclear weapons is enough to deter aggressive action and war, she added.

But the application of deterrence theory to post-cold war realities is far more complicated in the era of cyberattacks and AI, which could interfere with the command and control of nuclear weapons.

In light of these risks, presidents Biden and Xi issued a joint statement from the 2024 G20 summit affirming the need to maintain human control over the decision to use nuclear weapons.

The US and Russia exchange information on their strategic, long-range nuclear missiles under the New START agreement – a treaty to reduce and monitor nuclear weapons between the two countries which is set to expire in February 2026.

But, Lewis said, with the US decision to exit the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019, there are no longer any agreements between the US and Russia regulating the number or the deployment of ground-launched nuclear missiles with a range of 500-5,500 km.

She said short-range nuclear weapons were withdrawn and put in storage as a result of the 1991 Presidential Nuclear Initiatives but are not subject to any legal restraints.

The 10th NPT Review Conference was held in 2022 in New York. The issue of nuclear weapons threats and the targeting of nuclear power stations in Ukraine were central to the debate.

Lewis noted that a document was carefully crafted to finely balance concerns about the three pillars of the treaty – non-proliferation, nuclear disarmament and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. But Russia withdrew its agreement on the last day of the conference, scuppering progress.

“It was believed that if Russia were to use nuclear weapons it would likely be in Ukraine, using short range, lower yield ‘battlefield’ nuclear weapons,” she said, adding that Russia is thought to have more than 1,000 in reserve.

“These would have to be taken from storage and either connected to missiles, placed in bombers, or as shell in artillery,” Lewis wrote.

Increasingly the rhetoric from Russia suggests nuclear threats are a more direct threat to NATO – not only Ukraine – and could refer to longer range, higher yield nuclear weapons.

For example in his 21 September 2022 speech, Putin accused NATO states of nuclear blackmail, referring to alleged “statements made by some high-ranking representatives of the leading NATO countries on the possibility and admissibility of using weapons of mass destruction – nuclear weapons – against Russia.”

Putin added: “In the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country and to defend Russia and our people, we will certainly make use of all weapon systems available to us. This is not a bluff.”

There have been no expressed nuclear weapons threats from NATO states.

NATO does rely on nuclear weapons as a form of deterrence and has recently committed to significantly strengthen its longer-term deterrence and defence posture in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The current UK Labor government has repeatedly reiterated its commitment to British nuclear weapons – including before the July 2024 election, according to Lewis.

Therefore, she said, any movement to ready and deploy Russian nuclear weapons would be seen and monitored by US and others’ satellites, which can see through cloud cover and at night – as indeed appears to have happened in late 2022.

Lewis concluded that depending on other intelligence and analysis – and the failure of all diplomatic attempts to dissuade Russia – NATO countries may decide to intervene to prevent launch by bombing storage sites and missile deployment sites in advance.