“The prospects for a deal after Doha are worse than before Doha and they will get worse day by day,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
“Doha could be described as stalled at best, stepping backwards at worst. But at this stage, stalling is basically going backwards,” he added.
The official would not go into detail about the Doha talks, during which European Union officials shuttled between the two sides in an attempt to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement. ) of 2015 under which Iran had limited its nuclear program in exchange for an easing of economic sanctions.
Then US President Donald Trump reneged on the deal in 2018 and reinstated tough US sanctions on Iran, prompting Thran to begin violating its nuclear restrictions about a year later.
“Their vague demands, the reopening of settled issues and demands clearly unrelated to the JCPOA all suggest to us … that the real discussion that needs to take place is (no) between Iran and the United States to resolve the differences It is between Iran and the United States to resolve the fundamental question of whether they are interested in a mutual return to the JCPOA,” the senior US official said.
“At this stage, we are not sure that they (the Iranians) know what more they want. They did not come to Doha with a lot of specifics,” he added. “Most of the points they raised, they either knew – or should have known – were outside the scope of the JCPOA and therefore totally unsellable to us and to the Europeans, or it was issues that had been thoroughly discussed and resolved in Vienna and that we were clearly not going to reopen.”
Speaking before the UN Security Council, American, British and French diplomats all blamed Iran for the failure to revive the accord after more than a year of negotiations.
Iran, however, described the Doha talks as positive and blamed the United States for failing to provide guarantees that a new US administration would not abandon the deal again as Trump did.
“Iran has demanded verifiable and objective guarantees from the United States that the JCPOA will not be torpedoed again, that the United States will not violate its obligations again, and that the sanctions will not be reimposed under other pretexts or designations,” Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Majid Takht Ravanchi told the Council.
The senior US official said Washington had made it clear since talks began in April 2021 that it could not give Iran legal guarantees that a future US administration would stick to the deal.
“We said there was no legal way to bind a future administration, and so we looked for other ways to give some form of comfort to Iran and … us – as well as everyone else P5+1 (nations) and the EU coordinator – thought this case was closed,” added the senior US official.
Iran struck the initial deal with Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany, a group called the P5+1.
US and Iranian officials said the ball was in the other’s court.
The senior US official disputed Thran’s argument that Washington was to blame for the lack of progress, saying the US had responded positively to EU-proposed changes to the draft text of an agreement reached in talks wider in March, when Iran did not respond to these proposals.
If the agreement is not revived, he said, “Iranian leaders will have to explain why they turned their backs on the benefits of the agreement for issues that will not make a positive difference in the lives of one ordinary Iranian”.
The US official did not detail these issues. Restoring the deal would allow Iran to legally export its oil – the backbone of its economy.