Five world powers trying to save their 2015 nuclear deal with Iran from U.S. efforts to overturn it are grappling with a new setback as they meet with Iranian officials in Vienna Friday.A day before Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia were to hold talks with Iran in the Austrian capital, Moscow said it was suspending its work to reconfigure Iran’s underground Fordow nuclear facility for civilian medical research. The Trump administration had warned last month that it would revoke a waiver shielding Moscow from U.S. sanctions against the Fordow project starting Dec. 15.TVEL, a unit of Russian state-owned nuclear energy company Rosatom, had been working on the Fordow project since 2017. The project had been one of several that Iran agreed to undertake with international companies to modify various Iranian nuclear sites in ways that would ensure their peaceful, civilian uses, rather than military ones.Those projects were part of the 2015 deal in which Iran accepted restrictions on its nuclear activities in return for six world powers giving it relief from international sanctions.The U.S. withdrew from that agreement last year, saying it did not do enough to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons or engaging in other perceived malign activities. Tehran has said its nuclear ambitions are solely peaceful.FILE – The logo of Russian state nuclear monopoly Rosatom at the World Nuclear Exhibition 2014, the trade fair event for the global nuclear energy sector, in Le Bourget, near Paris, Oct. 14, 2014. quoted Russian atomic energy expert Alexander Uvarov as saying Rosatom has many international projects and did not want to risk hurting them by exposing itself to U.S. sanctions.Ryabkov said he would use the Vienna talks to raise the issue of the U.S. preparing to sanction international work at Fordow, a move he criticized as an attempt to break up the nuclear deal.FILE – Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei RyabkovSome analysts predicted Iran and the five world powers in Vienna likely would agree that the U.S. is to blame for the suspension of the Fordow project and avoid blaming each other for the setback to the deal or using its dispute resolution mechanism to resolve the issue.“The Europeans realize that triggering the dispute resolution process could end in a re-imposition of U.N. Security Council sanctions and that would kill the JCPOA,” analyst Kelsey Davenport of the Arms Control Association told VOA Persian, using an acronym for the nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. “So I think they will be judicious in their decision-making process before going down that road.”But Davenport said Britain, France and Germany could act if Iran follows through on a threat to more seriously breach its nuclear deal commitments in January and moves closer to having the capability to make an atomic bomb.“The Europeans may no longer see security value in remaining in the deal and trigger that dispute resolution mechanism,” she said. “So the window to try to preserve the JCPOA and bring Iran back into compliance is unfortunately closing.”“At the moment, I don’t think that is what the Iranians want,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, an analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, also speaking to VOA Persian.“The Iranians have an incremental strategy (for violating the nuclear deal) for a reason, which is to keep the JCPOA on life support, in case there is a change in Washington in 2020,” Taleblu said. “At that point, they could tempt a new U.S. president to come back into the deal and perhaps provide Tehran with some kind of payment for the damages incurred during sanctions.”Iran did not immediately comment on what it plans to do with its nuclear program following the Russian exit from Fordow.This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service.
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