doha Iran has said it will soon reinstate a nuclear deal like the 2015 deal if the US stops identifying the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization. Kamal Harrasi, a senior adviser to Iran’s spiritual and political leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told the Doha Forum international conference in Qatar on Sunday: “The Revolutionary Guards are a national army, and a national army classified as a terrorist group is certainly not acceptable.”
According to Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, negotiations with France, Germany and Great Britain are already very far advanced. “We have agreed on an agreement text with the three European countries,” he said on Iranian television on Saturday. “The final examination is still pending.” The USA would have accepted that they would have to move with “a few remaining, central points”. One of them is the status of the Revolutionary Guards.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell also said the parties could reach an agreement within days. “We are close, but there are still a few points to be clarified,” he said on the sidelines of the Doha Forum, according to the AFP press agency.
US special envoy for Iran Robert Malley said at the conference he was not so confident that a deal was imminent. You have to keep moving forward. We have been at the present point for some time.
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Oil exports could be easier again
In 2015, Iran agreed with Germany and the nuclear veto powers China, Russia, Great Britain, France and the USA to limit its own nuclear program. This should prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons. In return, sanctions against the country were relaxed, including on oil exports.
The USA had unilaterally terminated the agreement in 2018 under its then President Donald Trump, after which Iran no longer complied with all the conditions. In 2019, he had the IRGC classified as a terrorist organization. Under the incumbent US President Joe Biden, the US has been negotiating a new nuclear deal with Iran for months.
The talks seemed to be well advanced. In early March, however, Russia demanded unexpectedly large guarantees that Russian-Iranian trade would be exempt from any Western sanctions imposed in connection with Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. The West rejects that.
Einrique Mora, the EU representative coordinating the nuclear deal negotiations, and Iran’s chief negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, are due to meet in Tehran on Sunday to break the stalemate in the negotiations.
In view of the sharp rise in oil and gas prices, energy traders are pinning their hopes on a new agreement. According to experts, Iran could increase its oil production by up to a million barrels a day within a few months.
With material from Bloomberg
More: Search for New Energy Sources: The Gulf States and their Proximity to Russia