Washington:
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday dismissed Russia’s demand for guarantees as “irrelevant” that new sanctions against Ukraine will not affect Moscow’s rights under a reworked nuclear deal with Iran.
With the parties to the Iran deal, which left the US in 2018, now seemingly close to a new deal, Blinken rejected new demands voiced on Saturday by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
The sanctions against Russia over the invasion of Ukraine “have nothing to do with the Iran nuclear deal,” Blinken said on the CBS talk show “Face the Nation”.
They “just aren’t connected in any way, so I don’t think that’s relevant,” he said from Moldova, a small country on Ukraine’s southwestern border.
Blinken added that it was in the interest of not only America, but also Russia, that Iran would not be able “to have a nuclear weapon or the capacity to produce one in the very, very short term”.
‘Pragmatic approach’
The latest Russian reservations, which have arisen amid the intense crisis over Ukraine, threaten hopes that an Iran deal can be concluded soon.
Iran and the United Nations nuclear watchdog had announced a preliminary agreement early Saturday on an approach to resolving issues critical to reviving the country’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in Vienna that while the UN agency and Iran had “some important issues” to settle, they had now “decided to try a practical, pragmatic approach.” to overcome them.
However, Grossi said there was “no artificial deadline”.
Both US and UK officials said late in the week that the negotiators in the Vienna talks were close to a possible deal, while warning that some issues had yet to be resolved.
But Lavrov said on Saturday that Moscow, which itself has imposed heavy sanctions for its invasion of Ukraine, needed assurances from Washington before backing the nuclear deal.
He said Russia wanted written assurances that Ukraine-related sanctions “will in no way harm our rights to free, full-fledged trade and economic and investment cooperation, military-technical cooperation with Iran”.
Russia, together with Great Britain, China, France and Germany, is a party to the talks in Vienna. The United States is indirectly involved.
Moscow is expected to play a role in implementing a new deal with Iran, for example by receiving shipments of enriched uranium from Iran.
The 2015 nuclear deal has been hanging by a thread since US President Donald Trump withdrew in 2018 and re-imposed sweeping sanctions, including on Iran’s oil exports.
‘Very harmful’
The landmark agreement was intended to guarantee that Tehran would not be able to develop a nuclear weapon – something it has always denied wanting to do.
Iran said this week it was poised to rapidly increase its crude oil exports to pre-sanction levels once a deal is signed.
Iran’s international relations analyst Fayaz Zahed said the government should be very careful about Moscow’s potentially shifting interests.
“Now that Russia is under sanctions, it may no longer be interested in resolving the nuclear issue in Iran, a position that could be very damaging,” he said.
The coming days are seen as crucial because of the speed with which Iran is making nuclear progress.
The stock of enriched uranium has now reached more than 15 times the limit set in the 2015 accord, the IAEA said this week.
(This story was not edited by DailyExpertNews staff and was generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)