IAEA Has Four Options to Exert Pressure on Iran

 The logo of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is seen at their headquarters during a board of governors meeting in Vienna, Austria, June 7, 2021. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File Photo
The logo of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is seen at their headquarters during a board of governors meeting in Vienna, Austria, June 7, 2021. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File Photo
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IAEA Has Four Options to Exert Pressure on Iran

 The logo of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is seen at their headquarters during a board of governors meeting in Vienna, Austria, June 7, 2021. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File Photo
The logo of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is seen at their headquarters during a board of governors meeting in Vienna, Austria, June 7, 2021. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File Photo

European sources in Paris said that the fate of the negotiations to revive the 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement would largely depend on the outcome of the meeting of the IAEA Council of Governors in Vienna this week.

The three undeclared Iranian nuclear sites, in which IAEA inspectors found traces of enriched uranium, remain the subject of debate, despite the fact that four years have passed since the issue was made public.

Since then, the IAEA reports have emphasized that Iran did not give satisfactory answers, nor did it disclose the necessary information that would enable the agency to close the matter.

While the IAEA accuses Tehran of not respecting its obligations under the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement pertaining to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Iran blames the international agency for “politicizing” the issue and for being “biased” to Israel.

Moreover, Tehran insists on closing the issue, and makes it a condition to accept a return to the nuclear agreement.

Three points are worth observing: First, reviving the 2015 agreement will not take place imminently. This was confirmed by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who said on Monday, in a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid: “There is now actually no reason for Iran not to agree to these [European] proposals. But we have to note that this is not the case, and will not happen certainly in the near future.”

Second, the Israeli campaign continues at various levels, and has succeeded in convincing the US administration to delay returning to the 2015 agreement until after the legislative elections in Israel and the midterms in the United States.

Third, Tehran anticipated the agency’s meeting in Vienna by trying to defuse the escalation with Europe. In recent remarks, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said that Tehran was ready to cooperate with the IAEA.

There is no doubt that the IAEA governors, when making their decisions, will look at their consequences and the Iranian responses to them. According to the sources in Paris, four main options are available to agency officials:

First, the 35 governors can refrain from issuing any statement or taking any measure or action against Tehran, in order to give it an additional 3 month-opportunity to show the extent of the sincerity of its promises, and to avoid escalation or reactions that would increase the obstacles facing the IAEA inspectors.

The second option could be an exact repetition of their statement in June, in which they denounced Iran’s failure to cooperate with the agency.

However, the governors can go further with a third option, by pairing their statement with a deadline to Iran, as a warning of transferring the matter to the UN Security Council, in accordance with the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement.

Finally, the governors may seek to end Iran’s manipulation, by deciding, in the course of this week, to transfer the matter to the Council Security. This will allow the activation of the “snapback” mechanism that will enable the re-imposition of international sanctions on Iran, which were lifted at the beginning of 2016.

Iran’s responses to each of the four options can range from denouncing the agency’s decision, depriving it of access to some sites, or closing additional surveillance cameras, up to partially or completely severing relations with the IAEA.

Iran can also respond by increasing its enrichment rates, “even to 90 percent”, deploying more advanced centrifuges and raising the amounts of enriched uranium.



What to Know about the Tensions between Iran and the US before Their Third Round of Talks

The flags of US and Iran are displayed in Muscat, Oman, 25 April 2025. Iran and US will hold third round of nuclear talks on 26 April 2025, in Muscat. (EPA)
The flags of US and Iran are displayed in Muscat, Oman, 25 April 2025. Iran and US will hold third round of nuclear talks on 26 April 2025, in Muscat. (EPA)
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What to Know about the Tensions between Iran and the US before Their Third Round of Talks

The flags of US and Iran are displayed in Muscat, Oman, 25 April 2025. Iran and US will hold third round of nuclear talks on 26 April 2025, in Muscat. (EPA)
The flags of US and Iran are displayed in Muscat, Oman, 25 April 2025. Iran and US will hold third round of nuclear talks on 26 April 2025, in Muscat. (EPA)

Iran and the United States will hold talks Saturday in Oman, their third round of negotiations over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program.

The talks follow a first round held in Muscat, Oman, where the two sides spoke face to face. They then met again in Rome last weekend before this scheduled meeting again in Muscat.

Trump has imposed new sanctions on Iran as part of his “maximum pressure” campaign targeting the country. He has repeatedly suggested military action against Iran remained a possibility, while emphasizing he still believed a new deal could be reached by writing a letter to Iran’s 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to jumpstart these talks.

Khamenei has warned Iran would respond to any attack with an attack of its own.

Here’s what to know about the letter, Iran’s nuclear program and the tensions that have stalked relations between Tehran and Washington since the 1979 revolution.

Why did Trump write the letter? Trump dispatched the letter to Khamenei on March 5, then gave a television interview the next day in which he acknowledged sending it. He said: “I’ve written them a letter saying, ‘I hope you’re going to negotiate because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing.’”

Since returning to the White House, the president has been pushing for talks while ratcheting up sanctions and suggesting a military strike by Israel or the US could target Iranian nuclear sites.

A previous letter from Trump during his first term drew an angry retort from the supreme leader.

But Trump’s letters to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in his first term led to face-to-face meetings, though no deals to limit Pyongyang’s atomic bombs and a missile program capable of reaching the continental US.

How did the first round go? Oman, a sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, hosted the first round of talks between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. The two men met face to face after indirect talks and immediately agreed to this second round in Rome.

Witkoff later made a television appearance in which he suggested 3.67% enrichment for Iran could be something the countries could agree on. But that’s exactly the terms set by the 2015 nuclear deal struck under US President Barack Obama, from which Trump unilaterally withdrew America.

Witkoff hours later issued a statement underlining something: “A deal with Iran will only be completed if it is a Trump deal.” Araghchi and Iranian officials have latched onto Witkoff’s comments in recent days as a sign that America was sending it mixed signals about the negotiations.

Yet the Rome talks ended up with the two sides agreeing to starting expert-level talks this Saturday. Analysts described that as a positive sign, though much likely remains to be agreed before reaching a tentative deal.

Why does Iran’s nuclear program worry the West? Iran has insisted for decades that its nuclear program is peaceful. However, its officials increasingly threaten to pursue a nuclear weapon. Iran now enriches uranium to near weapons-grade levels of 60%, the only country in the world without a nuclear weapons program to do so.

Under the original 2015 nuclear deal, Iran was allowed to enrich uranium up to 3.67% purity and to maintain a uranium stockpile of 300 kilograms (661 pounds). The last report by the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran’s program put its stockpile at 8,294.4 kilograms (18,286 pounds) as it enriches a fraction of it to 60% purity.

US intelligence agencies assess that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”

Ali Larijani, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, has warned in a televised interview that his country has the capability to build nuclear weapons, but it is not pursuing it and has no problem with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspections. However, he said if the US or Israel were to attack Iran over the issue, the country would have no choice but to move toward nuclear weapon development.

“If you make a mistake regarding Iran’s nuclear issue, you will force Iran to take that path, because it must defend itself,” he said.

Why are relations so bad between Iran and the US? Iran was once one of the US’s top allies in the Middle East under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who purchased American military weapons and allowed CIA technicians to run secret listening posts monitoring the neighboring Soviet Union. The CIA had fomented a 1953 coup that cemented the shah’s rule.

But in January 1979, the shah, fatally ill with cancer, fled Iran as mass demonstrations swelled against his rule. The revolution followed, led by Khomeini, and created Iran’s theocratic government.

Later that year, university students overran the US Embassy in Tehran, seeking the shah’s extradition and sparking the 444-day hostage crisis that saw diplomatic relations between Iran and the US severed. The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s saw the US back Saddam Hussein. The “Tanker War” during that conflict saw the US launch a one-day assault that crippled Iran at sea, while the US later shot down an Iranian commercial airliner that the American military said it mistook for a warplane.

Iran and the US have see-sawed between enmity and grudging diplomacy in the years since, with relations peaking when Tehran made the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. But Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, sparking tensions in the Middle East that persist today.