The European Union’s mediator for reviving the Iran nuclear deal Enrique Mora met with Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani earlier this week, as Washington and Tehran are reportedly discussing new agreements that would limit the latter’s nuclear capabilities.

While US President Joe Biden has said the Iran nuclear deal is “dead,” a new agreement of sorts appears in the making.

“Long live the Iran deal” is not a cheer raised by anybody in the Biden Administration. Nor would Biden’s political opponents, who never liked the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), ever compliment his foreign policy achievements. But anyone concerned about the prospects for nuclear proliferation and conflict in the Middle East should be pleased by recent events.

On the record, the Biden team insist that there is no new nuclear deal. Off the record, however, officials from various nations have sketched the outlines of an impending cease-fire in the escalation with Iran. An unwritten agreement is in play for release of three dual US-Iranian citizens imprisoned in Iran on spurious charges, indirectly coupled with the US release of Iranian oil sale revenues.

The United States has already given Iraq permission to use 2.5 billion euros of frozen Iranian funds to pay off a gas and electricity debt, to be used for purchase of food and medicine. Iran will also be able to use $7 billion held in South Korea for similar purchases. Humanitarian trade has long been exempted from US sanctions. Under a new arrangement, however, the US Treasury will give explicit assurances to South Korean banks indemnifying them over release of the funds.

The arrangements also reportedly will cap Iran’s uranium enrichment level at 60% and slow down new US sanctions. Iran reportedly would stop its proxies from attacking American contractors in Syria and Iraq, restore some cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and refrain from sending ballistic missiles to Russia.

It is a cease-fire, in other words, including literally in Iraq, where Iran-backed militia are to halt attacks on US forces. A March 23 drone attack which killed an US civilian contractor and wounded more than two dozen other US personnel in Syria derailed the schedule for a prisoner release that has been in play for months.

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https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/06/iran-us-diplomacy-trudges-hopes-new-nuclear-understandings-grow

https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/06/iran-us-diplomacy-trudges-hopes-new-nuclear-understandings-grow#ixzz85f6Wtwx0