This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.
During 16 months of acrimonious, indirect talks with the United States, Iran has underplayed the importance of restoring the 2015 nuclear deal.
Iran has dragged its feet at the negotiating table. Its officials have refused to talk directly with their U.S. counterparts, requiring the European Union to mediate. Tehran has also been accused of making unrealistic demands.
Meanwhile, Iranian officials at home boasted that they could save Iran’s devastated economy even without reviving the accord, which would lift crippling U.S. sanctions and allow the country to sell its oil and gas on world markets.
But Iran’s rhetoric has shifted markedly in recent weeks as the sides appear to be on the cusp of agreeing to restore a deal that curbed Tehran’s sensitive nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of punitive international sanctions.
“What the people want from us is an outcome from these negotiations. They say you have negotiated and talked enough. The people demand results,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told reporters on August 15, in a noticeable shift.
At the same time, Iranian officials have said that they have demonstrated “flexibility” and it was now up to Washington to do the same, giving the Islamic republic the chance to blame the United States should the deadlock continue or efforts to salvage the deal fail.
Amir-Abdollahian’s remarks came a week after the EU submitted a draft “final text” to salvage the nuclear deal and after claims by U.S. officials that Iran had dropped some of its core demands. Although some last hurdles remain, there is growing hope that Tehran and Washington will sign off on the proposal.
Observers say Iranian officials appear to have concluded that they need a revived nuclear deal to address the country’s economic woes and fend off rising anti-government sentiment and near-daily protests.
The accord has been on life support since then-U.S. President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the deal in 2018 and reimposed sanctions that targeted Iran’s key economic spheres — including the banking and oil sectors — and denied the government its main source of revenue while making international trade increasingly difficult.
In response, Iran has reduced its commitments and expanded its nuclear activities. Fears have grown in the West that Tehran is close to amassing enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon.
Ali Afshari, a Washington-based analyst, says the devastating impact of U.S. sanctions on Iran’s economy led Tehran to “grudgingly” enter negotiations with Washington.
Afshari says that Iran is now aiming to sell a potential deal as a victory for the establishment. He notes how the official rhetoric in Tehran has focused on the possible removal of sanctions. Officials in hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi’s government have refrained from talking about restoring a deal that was agreed by his predecessor, Hassan Rohani, a relative moderate. Many hard-liners were critical of the original accord.
“They’re trying to convince their support base and sell them the deal,” Afshari said. “They say the talks are aimed at the ‘honorable abolition of the sanctions.’ They claim they have been standing against U.S. maximalist demands.”
Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri-Kani, an opponent of the 2015 deal, reportedly met with journalists in Tehran and provided them a list of “concessions” that the United States had made to Iran. He also boasted that Tehran had ignored Western deadlines and responded to U.S. pressure by escalating its sensitive nuclear activities.
Mohammad Jamshidi, Raisi’s deputy head of political affairs, claimed on Twitter that Iran had the “upper hand” in the nuclear negotiations and hailed Washington’s “retreat.”
Nournews, a news website that is affiliated with Iran’s National Security Council, rejected comments by U.S. officials that Tehran had given up some of its demands.
“The Americans are seeking to suggest that Iran has retreated in the talks, but they shouldn’t forget that it was Washington that had left the nuclear deal and it is the U.S. government that has retreated to its previous positions if it returns to the accord,” Nournews said on Twitter on August 24.
Ali Fathollah-Nejad, a scholar at the American University of Beirut, said Iranian officials and state media are trying to portray the potential revival of the nuclear deal as “a success for Iran’s stalwartness, thus mimicking the Raisi administration’s pledge to forge a stronger and better deal” than the original agreement.
“The top leadership in Tehran will try to sell any deal as a political victory of the Islamic republic over the U.S. and the West,” Fathollahi-Nejad added.
Amid the public boasting, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all important matters of the state, has remained silent.
Fathollahi-Nejad says Khamenei’s lack of a clear public stance “allows him to either take credit for a deal revival or to side with domestic hard-line opponents if a new deal fails.”