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Iran has dropped some demands for nuclear deal: report

Iran has dropped some of its key demands on reviving a deal to rein in Tehran’s nuclear plan, including its insistence that international inspectors close some probes of its atomic programme, bringing the possibility of an agreement closer, a senior US official told Reuters on Monday.

The US aims to respond soon to a draft agreement proposed by the European Union that would bring back the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that former President Donald Trump ditched and current President Joe Biden has sought to revive.

Speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, the official said that although Tehran has been saying Washington has made concessions, Iran has dropped some of its main demands.

“They came back last week and basically dropped the main hang-ups to a deal,” the official said as quoted by Reuters.

We think they have finally crossed the Rubicon and moved toward possibly getting back into the deal on terms that President Biden can accept,” the official added. “If we are closer today, it’s because Iran has moved. They conceded on issues that they have been holding onto from the beginning.”

Iran’s foreign ministry provided no immediate comment.

The official stressed that Iran had already largely relented on its demand that the US lift its designation of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) entity.

“We said under no circumstances would we do that. They continued to push it. A month ago they started to soften that core demand and said you can keep the [FTO] designation but we would like lift it from a number of companies affiliated with the IRGC. We said ‘no we’re not going to do that,’” he added.

Iran also demanded a guarantee that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would close investigations into unexplained traces of uranium.

Iran wants guarantees that the IAEA would close all of them. We said we would never accept that,” the official said.

But in June, Iran was blasted by the IAEA board of governors in a resolution criticizing Tehran for failing to explain the presence of uranium traces at three undeclared sites.

Still, the official said that a divide between the US and Iran remained and that “it could take a little longer” to reach a final agreement, if one is possible.

“We’re studying Iran’s response now and we’ll get back to them soon,” the official said.

Lifting sanctions in exchange for dismantling Iran’s nuclear programme

Earlier, State Department spokesman Ned Price said there was no guarantee a deal can be struck, adding that “the outcome of these ongoing discussions still remains uncertain as gaps do remain.”

Lifting some sanctions under the terms of the agreement would be a necessary thing to do for Washington but US officials say returning to the deal is crucial to preventing a nuclear crisis in the Middle East.

If we get this deal, yes, we do lift some sanctions, but Iran has to dismantle its nuclear programme,” the official said.

The development comes at a time when Iran is not only thought to have enough enriched uranium to build multiple weapons but also when its nuclear programme chief confirmed that Teheran had the means to produce an atom bomb, albeit no intention of doing so.

The deal was close to revival in March after 11 months of EU-brokered US-Iran talks in Vienna but negotiations stalled over obstacles such as Iran’s desire to remove the Revolutionary Guards from the FTO list and a guarantee that no future US president would abandon the deal.

A second official reached by Reuters said that under full implementation of the deal, the IAEA would be able to resume a comprehensive inspections regime that could detect any Iranian effort to pursue a nuclear weapon covertly. Much of this monitoring would remain in place indefinitely.

The same official also said Iran would be prohibited from enriching and stockpiling uranium above very limited levels, denying it the material required for a bomb. The official went on to add that Iran would not be permitted to have any of the 20 percent and 60 percent enriched uranium that it was stockpiling today; advanced centrifuges Iran is operating would be stopped and removed, including all of the centrifuges at its fortified underground facility at Fordow.

The official added that “strict limits on Iranian enrichment would mean that even if Iran left the deal to pursue a nuclear weapon, it would take at least six months to do so.”

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