Post #5636

🔤🔤🔤🔤2️⃣ At Geneva on 26 February Iran offered to “downblend” this stockpile of highly enriched uranium – an irreversible process – from 60% to 3.67%, the maximum level set in the JCPOA. The 2015 deal contained similar provisions to both downblend, or export the excess stocks. The US in Islamabad said it wanted the entire stockpile taken out of Iran, ideally under US supervision. It is not clear why downblending inside Iran under full IAEA supervision is a substantially worse option from the US perspective than shipping the uranium out of the country. In Geneva Iran offered a new confidence-building measure, saying it would not build any stockpile of uranium, and uranium would be enriched only on the basis of need. This would be a gain that Trump could claim surpassed any Obama deal. The Trump administration faces a political constraint on sanctions relief. In 2015 figures such as Marco Rubio, then a senator, lambasted Obama, saying: “Iran will immediately use the money that it’s receiving in sanctions relief to begin to build up its conventional capabilities. It will establish the most dominant military power in the region outside the United States, and it will raise the price of us operating in the region.” Trump as a result wants some restrictions on what Iran spends the sanctions relief. Iran for its part cannot accept such restrictions and needs some guarantee that the sanctions relief is permanent, and not reversible as in the past. It is here that the trust deficit between the two sides makes a solution so difficult. Iran itself seems divided on how to handle the US blockade of its ports, including whether to say it is a breach of the ceasefire and something that must end before the Islamabad talks can reconvene. More broadly, Ali Nasri, the Iran-based international lawyer, said on Tuesday two conflicting views existed inside Iran on how to handle the strait issue. One, more confrontational, view backs exploiting the strait to generate revenue, gain compensation for war damages and to assert national pride. The other sees it as a strategic negotiating lever to gain in the short term a lasting ceasefire, sanctions relief and security guarantees. “Later as the threat environment subsides, and the Trump presidency likely ends, a carefully crafted legal system could pave the way for Iran to exert greater authority over the passageway,” he suggested. #trump#iran#peacetalks#islamabad#obama 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸