Six powers, Iran to continue nuclear talks past deadline
John IrishArshad Mohammed/ Reuters/Daily Star/July 07, 2015 |
VIENNA: Iran and six major powers will keep negotiating past Tuesday’s deadline for a long-term nuclear agreement as they tackle the most contentious issues, including the continuation of a U.N. arms embargo on Iran, the big powers said. “We are continuing to negotiate for the next couple of days,” EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said outside the hotel where the talks between Iran, Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States are taking place.
Marie Harf, said the terms of an interim deal between Iran and the six would be extended through Friday to give negotiators a few more days to finish their work. “We’re frankly more concerned about the quality of the deal than we are about the clock, though we also know that difficult decisions won’t get any easier with time,” Harf said. “That is why we are continuing to negotiate.” The United States and its allies fear Iran is using its civilian nuclear program as a cover to develop a nuclear weapons capability. Iran says its program is peaceful.
An agreement would be the most important milestone in decades towards easing hostility between the United States and Iran, enemies since Iranian revolutionaries captured 52 hostages in the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979. A deal would be an important achievement for U.S. President Barack Obama and Iran’s pragmatist president Hassan Rouhani, but both leaders face skepticism from powerful hardliners at home.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said there was “every reason” to believe a deal would be done within “a few days”, and that there was an “understanding” that most of the current sanctions against Iran would be lifted. “There is only one big problem in terms of sanctions – it is the problem of a weapons embargo,” he told journalists according to Russian news agency Interfax.
He said it was important to reach agreement on this as soon as possible, saying that “ending the bans on supplies to Iran of the weapons required to fight terrorism is a very, very relevant objective”. It is the fourth time the parties have extended the terms of the interim deal, which was struck in November 2013 and provided Iran with limited sanctions relief in exchange for a halt to the production of uranium enriched to a purity level of 20 percent. The comprehensive deal under discussion is aimed at curbing Tehran’s most sensitive nuclear work for a decade or more, in exchange for relief from economic sanctions that have slashed Iran’s oil exports and crippled its economy.
The negotiators had initially given themselves an extra week when they missed a June 30 deadline for a final agreement, but a push in recent days was not enough to hammer out the deal. The latest extension to Friday leaves open the possibility that an agreement will not arrive in time for a Thursday deadline set by the U.S. Congress in order to provide an expedited, 30-day review. If a deal is sent to Congress between July 10 and Sept. 7, Congress will have 60 days to review it, taking into account lawmakers’ August vacation. Obama administration officials fear that could provide more time for any deal to unravel.
“We are interpreting in a flexible way our deadline, which means that we are taking the time, the days we still need, to finalize the agreement,” Mogherini said, adding that there remained several difficult issues to resolve. Among these, officials said, are Iranian demands for a U.N. arms embargo and ballistic missiles sanctions to be lifted, the timing of U.S. and EU sanctions relief, and disagreements over future Iranian nuclear research and development. A senior U.S. official said U.N. restrictions would remain both on Iran’s trade in arms as well as its access to missile technology but left open the possibility that these might be less onerous than they are at present. U.N. restrictions on the development of Iran’s missile program date to 2006. They call for Iran to abandon its ballistic missile program and aim to prevent it from developing “nuclear weapon delivery systems,” which diplomats say covers any missile capable of delivering an atomic warhead.
“There will be an ongoing restriction on arms just like there will be ongoing restrictions regarding missiles,” the senior U.S. official told reporters. Asked if these would be as tight as those now in effect, the official declined comment. While U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif planned to remain in the Austrian capital to continue negotiating, the majority of the other foreign ministers planned to leave, some for only 24 hours. U.S. officials are loathe to ease the conventional arms embargo against Iran, fearing it would allow Tehran to provide greater military assistance to militants in Yemen, Syria or elsewhere in the Middle East.
Iranian nuclear deal set to make hardline Revolutionary Guards richer
Reuters/Ynetnews/Published: 7.06.15/ Israel News
As Western sanctions began to bite, Iranian government rewarded IRGC (The Revolutionary Guards Corps) with huge contracts in oil business; the IRGC also enjoys other competitive advantages which will be even more useful as sanctions recede.
VIENNA – Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards have done very well out of international sanctions – and if a nuclear deal is done in Vienna this week under which those sanctions are lifted, they are likely to do better still.The Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), created by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, is more than just a military force. It is also an industrial empire with political clout that has grown exponentially in the last decade, benefiting from the favor of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, himself a former guardsman and, most recently, from the opportunities created by Western sanctions.
A Western diplomat who follows Iran closely told Reuters that the IRGC’s recent annual turnover from all of its business activities was estimated to be around $10-12 billion. Iranian officials refuse to reveal the IRGC’s market share, but $12 billion would be around a sixth of Iran’s declared GDP, at current exchange rates. “They control major companies, and businesses in Iran such as tourism, transportation, energy, construction, telecommunication and Internet,” said an Iranian official in Tehran who asked not to be named.
“Lifting sanctions will boost the economy; it will help them to gain more money.” It was the IRGC, unquestioningly loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that suppressed student protests in 1999 and also silenced the pro-reform protests that followed Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election in 2009. That year, a company affiliated to the IRGC bought the state-run telecoms company for about $8 billion.
Soon afterward, the United States and European Union slapped new sanctions on Iran’s oil and finance sectors, in a bid to force Iran to curtail a program that it said was peaceful but they argued could be used to develop nuclear weapons.
As these sanctions began to bite, it was the IRGC that was asked to take up the business of the European oil firms that had been forced to pull back. “The government rewarded them with huge no-bid contracts. Their front firms were named the winners of most of the bids,” said the head of an oil consulting company, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Competitive advantages
The IRGC’s construction arm, Khatam Al-Anbia, thought by many to be Iran’s largest company, is developing parts of the giant South Pars gas field, and has a $1.2 billion contract to build a line of the Tehran metro and a $1.3 billion contract to build a pipeline to Pakistan.
But the IRGC also enjoys other significant competitive advantages, which will be even more useful as sanctions recede. “Lower insurance, shipping, and commission costs with the banks will also enable the Guards to freely import spare parts, equipment, and technology from international companies,” the Western diplomat said. An Iranian trader based in a Gulf country who does business with some IRGC-affiliated firms said the Guards’ control over terminals in Iranian airports and ports helped them to move commodities in and out without paying duty.
Much of the IRGC’s business is done through front companies, many of them not even formally owned by the Corps, but by individuals and firms linked to it.
“For a few years now, the IRGC has been buying small and medium-sized companies in Iran and using them as front companies,” the trader said. To do business in Iran, foreign companies need an Iranian partner, which for large-scale projects often means firms controlled by the IRGC. Analyst Hamid Farahvashian said many of these front firms were not known at all, “and will be used for the time when sanctions are lifted to work with foreign companies”.And that might, for instance, allow the Western oil firms that Iran wants to lure back to do business at arm’s length with Khatam al-Anbia, which is designated by Washington as a “proliferator of weapons of mass destruction”, and has at least 812 affiliated companies.
“Companies should be careful when signing contracts because they’ll never know who’s really behind those companies,” the Western diplomat said. Unlike some parts of Iran’s hardline establishment, IRGC commanders have publicly backed the principle of a nuclear deal, which would anyway be impossible without Khamenei’s support.
Good reasons
“The establishment backs the deal. Khamenei has supported the negotiations. Therefore, the IRGC, which is loyal to the leader, could not reject it,” said analyst Saeed Leylaz. But the IRGC has good reasons of its own to welcome the deal, beyond the mere prospect of economic growth and contracts with the foreign firms now queuing up to invest in Iran. For all its skill in circumventing trade sanctions, for instance by trading through third countries, some of the restrictions have begun to prove insurmountable. “The IRGC-affiliated companies lacked the technology and knowledge and ability to carry out projects,” said a former Iranian official, who asked not to be named.
Basically, sanctions were gradually making it impossible for even the IRGC to make money. That is why they support lifting sanctions – then they will earn money through their subcontractors when the economy flourishes.”This does not mean there is no nervousness within the IRGC at the prospect of the economy opening up. Iran’s pragmatic president, Hassan Rouhani, has made much of the economic revival that an end to sanctions promises, and has been seeking to stimulate the growth of a genuine private sector, currently utterly overshadowed by state-controlled firms. Some pro-reform politicians have accused IRGC-affiliated companies of mismanagement and criticized them for delays.
“The IRGC is not a monolith. Some feel threatened by a deal that could open up the Iranian economy and force them to compete with major international companies,” said Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
For now, however, there is little or no sign that the political backing that the IRGC enjoys will fade, as Iran’s leaders publicly praise its role in managing Iran’s oil industry. Ahmadinejad has gone, but other former guardsmen hold significant positions, including the secretary of the Supreme Council of National Security, Ali Shamkhani, and parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani. “Boosting the economy will increase the IRGC’s influence over politics and the economy because it will strengthen the hardline establishment,” said one Iranian oil executive.
