Wendy Sherman: We wanted to shut down Iran’s enrichment forever, but we realized it would not work.

According to Fars News Agency’s International Monitoring Group, US Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman said in an interview that US governments had sought to shut down Iran’s entire enrichment program, but that former US President Barack Obama had concluded that it was impossible to know. Took back the created.

In a podcast interview with Foreign Policy magazine “Negotiators” published on Tuesday, Sherman spoke in detail about his experiences with the formation of the Borjam nuclear deal.

“The United States has said at all official meetings that Iran should not have any enrichment facilities or enrichment programs or anything like that,” he said in an interview about the years before the Borjam talks began.

“Uranium enrichment is one way to get nuclear material to a level that can be used in nuclear weapons,” he added. Another method is plutonium. “We wanted to close this (Iran’s enrichment program) forever so that they would not have any enrichment.”

“But the president,” Sherman said [اوباما] He realized that people could not forget the knowledge they had learned. “It was said that Iran would consider a small, limited, civilian enrichment program that would be allowed under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and would be overseen by the IAEA.”

Sherman’s statements match John Kerry

Wendy Sherman’s remarks are somewhat in line with what former Secretary of State John Kerry wrote in his memoirs about the need for the US government to accept Iran’s enrichment. In that book, Kerry noted that even “George W. Bush,” the pre-Obama president of the United States, had accepted Iran’s enrichment in private.

“Every day has been arguing for many years to be a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and as long as it is fully within the NPT restrictions,” Kerry wrote in a section of Every Day Is Extra. Has the right to enrich uranium. “We have repeatedly emphasized that the NPT only defines and enumerates the right to have a nuclear force, and has not defined or granted any of its members the right to enrich themselves.”

“Apart from whether or not Iran has the ‘right’ to enrich, I realized that until we are ready to talk about the possibility of continuing enriching Iran under well-defined restrictions, there is no way to achieve it,” he wrote. There will be no access, transparency and restrictions required to ensure that Iran does not pursue a military nuclear program. Maybe there was no way to bring Iran to the negotiating table. An ordinary person in Iran gets angry at the idea that his country cannot do what other independent countries do (enrichment), because the United States wants them to. For Iranians, such a thing is mere surrender to the United States; “Americans who, in their view, interfered in their independence and sovereignty for a very long time during the reign of (Mohammad Reza) Shah.”

“For a long time, the US position was that any enrichment, even if very limited, would undermine any agreement, but our P5 + 1 partners unanimously withdrew from that position, and they decided,” Kerry wrote in his book. To give Iran in particular what other countries were doing. In their view (US partners in the P5 + 1), future enrichment should be discussed so that the Iranians can take the negotiations seriously. I also learned from my private conversations that, despite the Bush administration’s public stance, it secretly and privately agreed with the idea (enrichment of Iran), although they never summed up the outcome or levels (enrichment). “They did not arrive.”

Sherman and Kerry’s remarks are significant because some US officials claim that the pressure of sanctions has led to Iran’s presence at the negotiating table. Officials in the Islamic Republic of Iran, meanwhile, say progress in Iran’s nuclear program has forced the United States to back down on sanctions that have lost their effectiveness over time.

Sherman: Representatives of Congress have not been read

In another part of the interview, Wendy Sherman said that Burjam is a very technical agreement and he is sure that many Democrats and Republicans in Congress have not read it.

“The final agreement was 110 pages,” he said. The agreement included some detailed and complex annexes. It was a purely technical agreement. “I’m sure most Republican senators, as well as some Democratic senators, have never read it, because the outcome of the agreement is so complex.”

Sherman explained that after the Barjam was reached, the American team had not yet been able to fully celebrate its achievement because they had to make sure that Congress did not reject the agreement.

Vienna talks

Sherman’s remarks come as the Biden administration claims that it intends to pave the way for a US return to the BRICS deal through the Vienna talks.

So far, six rounds of talks have been held in Vienna between the United States and other parties to the Security Council other than Iran to facilitate the return of the United States to the Security Council. The parties say tangible progress has been made in the talks, but some differences remain.

One area of ​​contention in the negotiations is the United States’ insistence on maintaining some of the sanctions imposed on Iran by the Donald Trump administration after its withdrawal from the Security Council. In addition, the Biden administration has stated that it can provide no guarantee that subsequent US administrations will not withdraw from the UN Security Council.

In addition, US government officials have previously stated that they intend to use the BRICS entry as a “platform” to address other disputes, including missile and regional issues.

Recently, the Supreme Leader stressed in a meeting that the Americans want to include a clause in the Borjam nuclear deal to oblige Iran to talk about missile and regional issues.

The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution noted in his last meeting with the Twelfth Government: “Otherwise we will not have an agreement.”

Ayatollah Khamenei said, “By saying this, they want to provide an excuse for their subsequent interventions on the principle of BRICS and missile and regional issues, and if Iran refuses to discuss them, they will say that it has violated the agreement and the agreement is unresolved.”

The Islamic Republic of Iran has emphasized that, given that the United States has been a party to the agreement, it is Washington that must return to the agreement by lifting sanctions, and that the fulfillment of US obligations needs to be verified. Tehran, of course, has emphasized that it is not in a hurry to get the United States back to the agreement.

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