Are Real Progress and a Military Threat Just Empty Words in Iran Nuclear Talks?

CGTN Europe

Samuel Ramani, Tutor of Politics and International Reations at University of Oxford discussed the indirect and constructive Iran-US talks.

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00:00I'm joined now by Samuel Romani. He's a tutor of politics and international relations at Oxford University.

00:06Samuel, thank you so much for your time.

00:08These talks are indirect. This is the third round. We're hearing constructive used to describe them.

00:15Do you see any real signs of progress so far?

00:19Well, I think that there's a little word of exactly what's happened out of these talks.

00:23I mean, either Iraq, Xi, Norwalkov have released any statements about the Iranian or the U.S. positions.

00:28But there also isn't that much optimism.

00:30The Trump administration is making it very clear that if there was no agreement,

00:35there would be a potential military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities within two months,

00:39and there'd be an increase in American forces in the region.

00:41The Iranians offered an interim nuclear deal to the United States that the U.S. didn't seem to want to go along with.

00:48And there also seemed to be drastically different interpretations about how much enrichment is acceptable.

00:52Steve Wyckoff was widely criticized within the Republican Party for even allowing for 3.45 percent.

00:58Nikki Haley, for example, wants none, whereas the Iranians want to have much more substantial enrichment and missile capabilities.

01:06We're also hearing that Iran's missile program might be something of a red line,

01:13which obviously is not directly linked to the nuclear program at all.

01:16But it seems there's a lot at play here.

01:19Could you talk to us about what could be the various red lines in these negotiations?

01:25Well, one of the big concerns and one of the big Republican criticisms of the Obama-Iran nuclear deal,

01:32the JCPOA of 2015, was that it dealt with nuclear issues in a silo,

01:37and it didn't deal with the other threats that Iran poses,

01:40in particular the threat posed by their ballistic missile program,

01:43but also their regional activities in Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, and their broader threat to Israel.

01:49It seems as if this current set of agreements have compartmentalized the regional activities,

01:52but they haven't compartmentalized the ballistic missiles.

01:56The U.S. sees ballistic missile development as merely a delivery mechanism for potential nukes,

02:01whereas Iran views that as an entirely separate issue that's legitimate self-defense that shouldn't be regulated.

02:08We know that what Iran wants is to get their sanctions lifted, which are, frankly, crippling the country.

02:15Are they in a stronger or weaker position than they were, say, in 2018?

02:20Well, I think that they're in some ways in a weaker position,

02:22because the Israelis have been able to show that they can decimate a lot of their aligned militia groups,

02:28as we've seen with the Hamas and Hezbollah.

02:31The Houthis have been holding up more resiliently in the face of a U.S. onslaught,

02:34and the Iraqi PMF remains largely intact.

02:37But Iran's asymmetric retaliation capacity has diminished,

02:41and the perception in Washington is that Iran is at a weak point,

02:43and we can get a tough deal out of them, a much tougher deal than we could have gotten before.

02:47But the Iranians still have staying power.

02:51I mean, they've been under these sanctions for decades now,

02:54and they've been able to source and develop stronger partnerships with Russia and China.

02:58The sanctions are not going to lead to internal instability or change of government in Iran.

03:03So the Iranians have staying power, but they do want the sanctions to be lifted,

03:06and the Americans see them as weak.

03:08So that's why they're driving a harder and harder deal,

03:10and that's making it harder for the Iranians to accept any deal.

03:13Yeah, and of course the U.S. is saying if we don't make a deal,

03:16then we're going to have a real problem, and we will resort to war.

03:20How real do you think that threat is,

03:22given that we're not seeing a huge amount of progress at this point in the talks,

03:26and we know how long these talks have taken in the past?

03:30Well, given the fact that the Trump administration has a history of escalating in terms of threats with Iran,

03:36and then ultimately dialing down in its responses,

03:39I think the Iranians are comfortable that they can kind of weather the storm.

03:42There was obviously a lot of concern when the Iranian-backed Houthi militias

03:45struck up Haik Aramco oil facilities in Saudi Arabia in 2019,

03:50that there was going to be an escalation.

03:51That didn't happen.

03:52When Soleimani died, it was an isolated event in 2020.

03:56There wasn't a broader war.

03:57So I think the Iranians will think that Trump has a history of barking very loud

04:01when it comes to these threats, and then ultimately not delivering on them.

04:04One of the reasons why I think that Trump is doing this

04:07is because Obama effectively kind of ruled out a military solution to the question

04:11and pursued negotiations without that stick.

04:13And Trump saw that as a mistake,

04:15and Trump is using that threat as bargaining leverage with the Iranians,

04:19thinking that it's going to lead to a better outcome.

04:21Thank you so much for chatting to us.

04:23That is Samuel Romagna,

04:24tutor of Politics and International Relations at Oxford University.

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