Lawmakers In Iran List Redlines For Nuclear Talks

Iran International Newsroom
Iran's hardliner parliament pledging steadfastness in a July 2020 session.
Iran's hardliner parliament pledging steadfastness in a July 2020 session.

A large majority in Iran's parliament issued a statement urging President Ebrahim Raisi not to agree to any new nuclear deal without ensuring Iran's demands.

In the Sunday statement signed by 250 lawmakers, out of 290, stressed that getting credible guarantees is a red line to ensure the interests of the Iranian people is protected. Hardliners loyal to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei dominate the Iranian parliament since 2020, after elections in which most rivals were banned from contesting.

Iran has been insisting to obtain a political guarantee from the United States that it would not renege on a new nuclear agreement. Former president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018, reimposing crippling sanctions on Tehran.

However, the Biden Administration cannot guarantee that a future president or Congress will not reimpose sanctions.

Lawmakers said the negotiations to revive the 2015 deal have reached a critical point, calling on the president not to compromise on any of the demands reiterated by the Islamic Republic. These include not only a political guarantee, but also the removal of all sanctions imposed on Iran, whether for nuclear or other reasons, such as human rights violations or terrorism. The text explicitly mentions guarantees by France, Germany and the United Kingdom, the three European signatories of JCPOA, to remove all sanctions.

The statement said the US and the three European signatories of the nuclear deal have shown in the past eight years that they are not committed to any agreement and used all the possible means against the interests of the Iranian people, adding that they also put sanctions on medicines – a highly questionable claim.

The lawmakers also asked Raisi to get credible will not use JCPOA’s trigger mechanism designed to reimpose international sanctions in case Iran violates the nuclear agreement.

According to the statement, the US and the three European countries must lift all the sanctions related to nuclear, terrorism, missiles, and human rights issues, including the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), CAATSA U-turn, and the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA).

The US and JCPOA signatories must fulfill their obligations about sanctions in a manner verifiable for Iran, they said, noting that the administration should brief the parliament on the removal of oil and banking sanctions, then the parliament would approve reducing the nuclear activities.

Western and Russian diplomats and the US State Department in recent days have said that the Vienna talks have made significant progress, and some have said a final agreement is imminent until the end of February.

Although the parliament’s move could be a negotiating ploy by Tehran, but it indicates a final deal in Vienna can be harder than what Western sources have indicated.