Iran Talks Inch Toward Conclusion in Vienna

Here is today’s Foreign Policy brief: The eighth round of Iran deal negotiations resumes in Vienna, French President Emmanuel Macron visits Kyiv, and Canada cracks down on truck convoy protests.

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Representatives from Iran, China, Russia, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom (with the United States absent but close by) once again are gathering around the negotiating table in Vienna to discuss the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal.

The talks resume with some rare momentum after the United States restored sanctions waivers that allow Russian, Chinese, and European firms to work with Iran on certain civil nuclear projects and activities of “nonproliferation value.”

Restoring the waivers, which had been rescinded by the Trump administration in 2019 and 2020, was “designed to facilitate discussions that would help to close a deal,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken explained to Congress in a letter. He added that it was not part of any quid pro quo between the United States and Iran.

Although Iranian officials have made positive signals over the past few weeks, even suggesting direct talks with the United States were possible, the waiver restoration was met with a shrug from Iranian officials. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian called it “good but insufficient” on Sunday, while Foreign Ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh went further, calling sanctions relief a “red line” in the talks.

“Washington has decided to take a step which has no impact on Iran’s economic situation … a responsible [U.S.] government should return to the deal and fulfill its obligations,” Khatibzadeh added.

So, if a revived deal is within reach, what’s stopping it from crossing the finish line? Plenty, Naysan Rafati, a senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, told Foreign Policy. For one, agreements still need to be reached on which specific sanctions Iran gets relief from (not all U.S. sanctions are related to Iran’s nuclear activities).

Then there’s the issue of Iran’s enriched uranium stocks and how to reduce them significantly, as well as the thorny issue of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges—now much more advanced than in 2015 and capable of shortening Iran’s “breakout” time to weapons-grade material. (Even then, a viable nuclear weapon would still take at least a year to produce, as my FP colleague Colum Lynch explained last month.)

On top of it all is the challenge of sequencing—essentially agreeing to which party goes first and in what order.

“There are technical ways of squaring these various circles, but once you get to the nitty-gritty of it, the amount of granular detail and the process by which it would actually be implemented in practice—it’s a lot of moving parts,” Rafati said.

Rafati said the buoyant mood in Vienna may be less about an imminent deal than the realization from negotiators that the new negotiating team under President Ebrahim Raisi, initially seen as intransigent, is willing to work constructively toward a deal in the future.

As the eighth round of talks resumes, there’s reason for cautious optimism. “You can see light at the end of the tunnel,” Rafati said. “And still be quite concerned about the tunnel caving in.”

Macron in Kyiv. Fresh from his five-hour meeting with Vladimir Putin on Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron is in Kyiv on Tuesday for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The Russian president called Macron’s ideas and proposals “rather feasible for creating a foundation for our further steps.”

Following his meeting with Zelensky, Macron then travels to Berlin for three-way talks alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Polish President Andrzej Duda.

Macron won’t be the only European official visiting Ukraine, with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock as well as her Czech, Slovak, and Austrian counterparts all spending time in the country on Tuesday.

Ottawa’s truck protests. The chief of police in the Canadian capital, Ottawa, called for a “major push of resources to come in the next 72 hours” on Monday to help quell an ongoing protest stemming from a decision to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for truck drivers wishing to cross the U.S. border. The vaccine mandate protest—which has seen Ottawa’s streets blocked by trucks, cars, and tractors—has since expanded to include general grievances about Canada’s coronavirus restrictions. Attempts to spread the protests to other Canadian cities have been met with counterdemonstrations.

Meta vs. Europe. Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, has threatened to remove its Facebook and Instagram apps from the European market, citing increased data privacy hurdles from European regulators. The European Commission has said its negotiations with Washington regulators over privacy rules would “take time given also the complexity of the issues discussed and the need to strike a balance between privacy and national security.”

Though the company is unlikely to follow through, a regionwide removal of Facebook and Instagram would go significantly further than the company’s actions in Australia in 2021, when it briefly blocked news content on Facebook.

Libya’s vote. Libya is set to choose a new interim prime minister on Thursday as its eastern-based parliament voted to further delay elections after plans to hold them fell apart in December. A new plan, approved on Monday, calls for a referendum on the country’s de facto constitution with elections to then follow 14 months after.

Landlords in Nigeria will have to adopt short-term budgeting plans if a new law, under consideration by the Senate, passes. The bill seeks to end the practice of collecting rent on an annual basis and move toward a monthly system, a method the bill’s proponents hope will provide renters with greater financial stability.

Ayem Ojie, a landlord in Lagos, is against the changes. “Yearly rents should not be debated because many house-owners depend on it for survival,” he told the BBC, saying he is putting the lump sums together for his retirement. “Financial planning is easy when the funds are in bulk.”