Raisi’s election will not remove Iran’s nuclear talks, Western powers say

Western powers promised over the weekend that they would make efforts to restore Iran’s nuclear deal so that the capital could undo the effects of the election. Ibrahim Raisi, clergy and conservative judiciary, as president of Iran.

On Sunday, Vienna negotiators suspended talks aimed at reviving the deal. In Brussels, the EU said it was ready to work with Iran’s new government, stressing that “it is important to continue intense diplomatic efforts [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] back to track “.

U.S. officials stressed Sunday that a tough presidential election did not dampen the Biden administration’s desire to revive Iran’s nuclear treaty.

Jake Sullivan, national security adviser to U.S. President Joe Biden, told ABC News: “Our top priority right now is to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. We believe that this is the best way to achieve that diplomacy rather than military conflict. we will negotiate firmly with the Iranians to see if we can reach a result that will put their nuclear program in the box. ”

He added that Iran’s top leader will be the person who will eventually decide whether to go back to the nuclear deal, not the country’s president.

But Naftali Bennett, Israel’s new right-wing prime minister, who took office last week, warned on Sunday that it was “the last chance for the world’s powers to wake up before they return to the nuclear deal and understand who they are doing business with.”

He spoke at his first cabinet meeting and added: “These guys are killers, they are mass killers. The regime of wild hangers should never be allowed to have weapons of mass destruction that will allow them to kill thousands upon millions.”

Israel has come out against reviving a nuclear deal with Iran. He sees Iran’s hand behind the region’s main opponents: Hamas, a militant group controls the Gaza Strip, and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite faction and Lebanon’s largest political and military force.

Raisi will take office in early August after winning the election on Friday, replacing Hassan Rouhani. Iran has sought to restore the 2015 nuclear deal and shake it off without U.S. sanctions. The election leaves all branches of the state in control of the harsh regime, giving an additional layer of uncertainty to an already complex process.

Raisi said in his campaign that his government will continue nuclear talks, and Iranian analysts said the regime will need to lift sanctions if the incoming president can fulfill his promise to alleviate the republic’s economic difficulties.

But one person inside the regime told the FT that the hardliners wanted to negotiate on their terms and that they did not negotiate with Tehran’s insistence on Iran’s support for militant groups across the region and no negotiations to expand its increasingly sophisticated missile program.

Raisi is much more in line with the thinking of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader who gives the final word on all key foreign policy and security decisions, than Rouhani, who wanted to sign a nuclear deal in 2015 and improve relations with the West.

A Raisi government is unlikely to try to cool relations with the US by overcoming the anti-core solution. Former US President Donald Trump left the deal in 2018 and re-imposed sanctions on Iran.

Tehran has violated the limits of the uranium enrichment agreement and worries about hopes of reaching treaties in European capitals as Iran accepted the limit of its nuclear program in exchange for the removal of many international sanctions.

Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, a visiting member of the European Council on External Relations, said the election victory should not have an immediate impact on the Vienna talks, adding that the US’s re-entry into the nuclear deal remains in Iran’s strategic interests.

But he warned that victory would change the path of diplomacy in the medium term. “A Raisi administration is unlikely to reach such an ‘over-the-top’ agreement, and Raisi’s personal history and the possible conduct of his administration could lead to obstacles to broader negotiations between many Westerners, citing human rights concerns.”

Iran’s negotiators and the remaining six signatories – the EU, Germany, France, the UK, Russia and China – have been looking since April to see how to restore the agreement and pave the way for the US to re-enter.

A spokesman for the US State Department said: “Our Iran policy is designed to further US interests, regardless of who is in power. We would like to take advantage of the significant progress made in the last round of talks in Vienna.”

Additional report by Michael Peel in Brussels