Iran last Friday halted negotiations aimed at implementing the recently announced Joint Plan of Action (JPA) between the P5+1 global powers and Tehran, with reports indicating that the Iranians had walked out in protest of new Department of Treasury measures targeting companies and individuals in violation of U.S. restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear program.
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told the semi-official Fars news agency on Friday: “We are evaluating the situation and Iran will react accordingly to the new sanctions imposed on 19 companies and individuals. It is against the spirit of the Geneva deal.”..The Iranians said “they had received instructions from Tehran to stop the discussions and fly back to Tehran,” the diplomat said. “It was quite unexpected.”
The application of existing U.S. laws is not in violation of the JPA – which specifies that new sanctions must not be passed during the agreement’s interim six month period – but Iranian state media nonetheless conveyed evaluations describing the American move as an “act of war.”
“All of the sanctions are a violation of Iran’s sovereignty and really an act of war and all of the sanctions should be lifted,” said Sara Flounders, with the International Action Center in a Friday interview. “Not only is the US imposing sanctions on Iran but they are saying any country in the world that has any transactions with Iran will then be fined by the US. So it is really sanctions and threats upon the whole world,” she added.
Iran’s protestations may be difficult for diplomats and analysts to credit. The JPA was billed as a freeze of the Iranian nuclear program, but since its announcement the Iranians have emphasized that they will continue enriching uranium, continue bolstering their plutonium production facility at Arak, and continue testing ballistic weapons. The commitment to continued work at Arak raised concerns, per the Associated Press, that “Iran is violating [the JPA’s] rules and spirit.” The announcement of an impending ballistic missile was perhaps even more controversial. The Obama administration had once explicitly emphasized that such a test violate the JPA. The administration has since reversed itself on that claim, but Iranian ballistic missile tests may still be difficult to align with Tehran’s implication that the U.S. is being overly bellicose. In any case Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of Foundation for Defense of Democracies, recently assessed that Iranian leaders are essentially bluffing in threatening to abandon negotiations, even if the U.S. were to actually imposes new sanctions. Diplomats indicated last Friday that Iranian negotiators are expected to return to the implementation talks within a week.
[Photo: Meet Iran / YouTube]