{"id":6911,"date":"2019-09-12T14:00:22","date_gmt":"2019-09-12T11:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/?p=6911"},"modified":"2019-09-12T14:00:22","modified_gmt":"2019-09-12T11:00:22","slug":"french-mediation-attempts-between-the-united-states-and-iran-in-limbo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/monitoring-and-translation\/reports\/french-mediation-attempts-between-the-united-states-and-iran-in-limbo\/","title":{"rendered":"French Mediation Attempts Between the United States and Iran in Limbo"},"content":{"rendered":"

In recent months, France has stepped up its efforts to convince the United States and Iran to talk. But the French initiative has suffered setbacks.
\nWashington refuses to lift sanctions against Iran after pulling out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), otherwise known as the nuclear deal, last May.
\nThe French President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s mediatory role between the United States and Iran might be a failed gamble for now as far as Iran is concerned too. Iran thinks that France has not invested enough to save the nuclear deal.
\nFor months, Iran has insisted that the Europeans should open up a line of credit, known as the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX), to allow the country to sell its oil and to receive cash despite US sanctions. But Europe has failed to convince the United States to allow INSTEX to become fully operational.
\nNot surprisingly, the mood in Iran toward Europe has shifted. Iran\u2019s hardline supporters of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei reject talks<\/a><\/u> with the Trump administration. The so-called \u201cHezbollah Line\u201d (a title given to groups that promote a culture of resisting sanctions and US pressures) posted an article on the supreme leader\u2019s website which mentioned that it was not a good time to talk to the United States. In a threatening tone, the article suggested that any person or group in Iran that promoted talks with Washington was stepping into unchartered territory.
\nIn late August, backed by President Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was stepping into unchartered territory when he flew to Biarritz, France<\/a><\/u>, to meet with Macron who was hosting the G-7 summit. The trip aimed to promote talks with the United States.
\nMacron and Zarif agreed on a phased plan to resume talks between the United States and Iran, and a meeting between the leaders of the two countries. But the plan was nipped in the bud as soon as Zarif returned to Iran, and after President Rouhani suggested that he was open to a face-to-face meeting with President Trump.
\nMacron\u2019s initiative also proposed a possible meeting between Iran and the United States if Tehran remained fully compliant<\/a><\/u> with the JCPOA. In exchange, the United States would offer temporary sanctions relief to Iran by supporting a $15 billion credit line to provide Tehran with cash in return for selling its oil.
\nMacron seized on Trump\u2019s seemingly flexible attitude towards his initiative while in Biarritz, though the US president made no promises to support it. Iran subsequently sent its diplomats<\/a><\/u> to Paris to hash out the details of the plan. The diplomats returned home hopeful. France offered Iran an initial $5 billion line of credit<\/a><\/u> and another $10 billion if Tehran entered into talks with the West about its regional influence. Iran said it was ready to engage in talks, but it offered no specifics about how it planned to roll back its regional influence.
\nAs a compromise, President Rouhani stressed that Iran\u2019s announced steps to reduce its nuclear commitments under the JCPOA were reversible<\/a><\/u> if the Europeans operationalized INSTEX. In May 2019, Iran announced three steps to reduce its commitments to the JCPOA. In the first and second steps, each with a 60-day grace period in between, Iran violated JCPOA conditions by increasing its uranium stockpile beyond 300kg to advance its nuclear<\/a><\/u> capacity and enriched uranium exceeding the 3.67 percent concentration limit. It also operationalized more advanced nuclear centrifuges<\/a><\/u>, an array of 20 IR-6 and IR-4s to enrich uranium. These new centrifuges are 10 times faster than the old generation of IR-1 centrifuges that Iran once had.
\nIran\u2019s Supreme National Security Council has since announced that the country\u2019s strategic<\/a><\/u> patience is over as Europe has failed to live up to its obligations under the JCPOA. While Iran expects France to convince the US president to support the INSTEX line of credit to Iran, President Trump has told Macron that he will not reduce sanctions<\/a><\/u> against Iran without a comprehensive agreement<\/a><\/u>.
\nThe United States has since imposed new sanctions on Iran\u2019s oil and shipping industry, blacklisting dozens of Iranian owned-tankers, companies and insurance firms that are controlled by Tehran\u2019s Al Quds Force, an elite military unit designated by the United States as a terror group.\u00a0\u00a0 Iran says that the new sanctions are unprecedented and refuses to make further concessions, and would rather set an example<\/a><\/u> of resisting sanctions than being forced to comply with US demands.
\nAs a result, the French mediation attempts seem to have hit rock bottom. There is speculation that the French might try to revive their multi-phase plan<\/a><\/u> during the upcoming UN General Assembly meetings in September in New York. France, meanwhile, continues to offer assurances to the United States that Iran\u2019s latest nuclear agenda is intent on forcing a compromise deal and not to send negative signals to Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In recent months, France has stepped up its efforts to convince the United States and Iran to talk. But the French initiative has suffered setbacks. Washington refuses to lift sanctions against Iran after pulling out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), otherwise known as the nuclear deal, last May. The French President Emmanuel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3293,3295,12,3294,69],"class_list":["post-6911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reports","tag-french-mediation","tag-french-mediation-attempts-between-the-united-states-and-iran-in-limbo","tag-iran","tag-limbo","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6911"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6913,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6911\/revisions\/6913"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}