International

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens to derail Iran nuclear talks

Published

3 years ago

March 8, 2022

Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, right, welcomes Rafael Mariano Grossi, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Tehran on March 5.

VIENNA — Fears mounted Monday that the Iran nuclear deal may become collateral damage in the Ukraine war as Russia pressed its demand to be exempted from U.S. sanctions in any future business dealings with Iran.

Negotiators had hoped to finalize an agreement to revive the 2015 nuclear deal imminently and have already allowed several presumed deadlines to slip after 11 months of talks on ways to bring the deal back to life.

The talks have been focused on how to bring both the United States and Iran back into compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA as the deal is known, by rolling back sanctions imposed by the United States after it pulled out of the agreement in 2018 and the advances later made by Iran in its nuclear program in response to the U.S. sanctions.

The eruption of war in Ukraine has thrown up additional complications by overturning Russia’s relations with the Western nations involved in the negotiations, including the United States, Britain, France and Germany, along with Iran and China. Because the United States withdrew from the agreement, the talks at the Palais Coburg Hotel in Vienna have been taking place among the remaining parties, with negotiators shuttling between the talks and the U.S. delegation at a different hotel.

In a phone call with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated that Russia wants the revival of the nuclear deal to be accompanied by U.S. guarantees that sanctions imposed by the West in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine won’t apply to Russian trade or investment with Iran.

Lavrov told Amirabdollahian that the deal’s resuscitation “should ensure that all its participants have equal rights regarding the unhindered development of cooperation in all areas,” the Russian Embassy in Iran said on Twitter.

The demand, first raised by Lavrov at a news conference in Moscow on Saturday, has rocked the negotiations underway in Vienna.

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This was the first time Russia had given any indication that its position might have shifted, and diplomats are now scrambling to assess what the new demands mean and how they might affect the chances of getting a revived deal. Iran seemed as stunned as any of the other countries, with Iranian officials complaining to Iranian media that they only learned of the Russian demand from news reports.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken indicated in an interview Sunday that the United States would not be prepared to bargain over the sanctions imposed on Russia for the sake of the nuclear deal, saying the issues are unrelated.

“The sanctions that are being put in place and that have been put in place on Russia have nothing to do with the Iran nuclear deal and the prospects of getting back into that agreement,” he told CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “These things are totally different and are — just are not in any way linked together.”

Iran is still pushing for further concessions from the United States on issues related to economic guarantees and removing Iranian entities from the U.S. list of designated terrorists before agreeing to resume adherence to the deal, diplomats say. It is still possible the negotiations could collapse regardless of any shift in Russia’s position, a Western negotiator said.

But diplomats now have to contend with the possibility that Russia may try to upend the deal altogether or to use the talks as a bargaining chip to exact concessions from the West on sanctions related to Ukraine.

“There’s a real tension between Russia’s long-standing interest in containing the Iran nuclear program and this new Russia that seems willing to bring its relations with the West crashing down,” said Henry Rome, an analyst with the Eurasia Group.

Russia may also now have no interest in remaining in a revived deal that would benefit the United States and its Western allies but would potentially damage Russian interests by bringing oil prices down, said Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Iran would be able to sell its oil on the open market again, which could ease tight global supplies and bring prices down by as much as 10 percent.

“Considering the magnitude of the global pressure against Russia, it’s understandable why they might try and hold the Iran nuclear deal hostage to secure their own interests,” he said. “Russia wants the world to feel the economic pain of an embargo against Russian oil. Helping to get Iranian oil back on the market would soften the global financial blow.”

Russia’s participation in the agreement isn’t essential, but the original JCPOA assigns Russia an important role in shipping out and storing Iran’s excess stocks of enriched uranium. The original deal is also backed by a U.N. Security Council resolution, which Russia could veto if it chooses to oppose the revived deal.

Those are issues that could be worked around, but that would be likely to put a further brake on a resolution of the talks, diplomats say. In the meantime, Iran is continuing to enrich uranium and inching closer to what is known as breakout point, meaning that it would have enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear weapon should it choose to do so. “Time is of the essence,” a senior Western diplomat said.

The Washington Post

Related Topics:invasion Iran nuclear Russia Ukraine

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International

Moscow attacks Ukraine with drones, missiles

Published

13 hours ago

December 31, 2024

Trends Admin

Moscow attacks Ukraine with drones, missiles

Kyiv said Tuesday that Russia had launched a barrage of drones and missiles across Ukraine, conceding that there were successful strikes in the east of the country and near the capital.

Authorities did not elaborate on what had been hit but in the wider Kyiv region, the governor said debris from a downed projectile had damaged a private home and wounded a woman.

Moscow said its forces had used attack drones and precision weapons in a “combined” assault on a military airfield and a munitions production facility, claiming that the targets were struck.

International

Catholic priest sentenced to 11 years for criticising his president

Published

23 hours ago

December 31, 2024

Trends Admin

Catholic priest sentenced to 11 years for criticising his president

A Catholic priest in Belarus on Monday was convicted on charges of high treason for criticising the government and handed an 11-year sentence, in the first case of politically-driven charges against Catholic clergy since Belarus became independent after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

The conviction and sentencing of Rev. Henrykh Akalatovich comes as Belarusian authorities have intensified their sweeping crackdown on dissent ahead of the Jan. 26 presidential election that is all but certain to hand authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko a seventh term in office.

The Viasna Human Rights Centre said Akalatovich, 64, rejected the treason charges. The group has listed him among 1,265 political prisoners in the country.

“For the first time since the fall of the Communist regime, a Catholic priest in Belarus was convicted on criminal charges that are levelled against political prisoners,” said Viasna’s representative Pavel Sapelka. “The harsh sentence is intended to intimidate and silence hundreds of other priests ahead of January’s presidential election.”

Akalatovich, who has been in custody since November 2023, was diagnosed with cancer and underwent surgery just before his arrest. The priest from the town of Valozhyn in western Belarus, who was critical of the government in his sermons, has been held incommunicado, with prison officials turning down warm clothing and food sent to him.

Arkatovich is among dozens of clergy — Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant — who have been jailed, silenced or forced into exile for protesting the 2020 election that gave Lukashenko a sixth term. The disputed vote that the opposition and the West said was marred with fraud triggered mass protests,. The authorities then responded with a sweeping crackdown that saw more than 65,000 arrested and thousands beaten by police.

Catholic and Protestant clergy who supported the protests and sheltered demonstrators at their churches were particularly targeted by repressions. Belarusian authorities openly seek to bring the clergy into line, repeatedly summoning them for “preventive” political talks, checking websites and social media, and having security services monitor sermons.

While Orthodox Christians make up about 80% of the population, just under 14% are Catholic and 2% are Protestants.

Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus for nearly 30 years and describes himself as an “Orthodox atheist,” lashed out at dissident clergy during the 2020 protests, urging them to “do their jobs,” and not fuel unrest.

Lukashenko is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, allowing Russia to use his country’s territory to send troops into Ukraine in February 2022 and to deploy some of its tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

Catholic priest sentenced to 11 years for criticising his president

International

Second South Korea Jeju Air flight suffers landing problem

Published

2 days ago

December 30, 2024

Trends Admin

The Boeing 737-800 involved in the latest incident was the same model as the Jeju Air plane that crashed on Sunday killing 179 people

Second South Korea Jeju Air flight suffers landing problem

A Jeju Air flight from Seoul on Monday was forced to return after encountering a landing gear problem, the airline said, a day after South Korea’s most deadly plane crash.

The Boeing 737-800 involved in the latest incident was the same model as the Jeju Air plane that crashed on Sunday killing 179 people after coming down without its landing gear engaged.

Jeju Air Flight 7C101, which departed Seoul’s Gimpo International Airport for Jeju island “at around 6:37 am, returned to Gimpo at 7:25 am” after a landing gear issue was detected shortly after takeoff, the South Korean airline said.

“Shortly after takeoff, a signal indicating a landing gear issue was detected on the aircraft’s monitoring system,” Song Kyung-hoon, head of the management support office at Jeju Air, told a news conference.

“At 6:57 am, the captain communicated with ground control, and after taking additional measures, the landing gear returned to normal operation. However, the decision was made to return to the airport for a thorough inspection of the aircraft.”