Thread by @laurnorman

Some thoughts on #IranTalks and the issue of guarantees. I've had a few days to speak to western sources to get their take on the role disagreement over guarantees that the U.S. not again withdraw from JCPOA played in stalling Vienna talks.-1-

First, an acknowledgement that different sources always have slightly different takes and perceptions and the caveat that since the Iranians wouldn't speak to the U.S. directly, some misunderstandings of each other's positions and expectations was inevitable. -2-

Second, my understanding is that the central factual claim made by @tparsi -- that Iran lowered its demand from insisting on a permanent guarantee that the U.S. not exit the JCPOA to insisting on a legal guarantee that the Biden administration not exit the deal -- is correct. -3-

@tparsi However, there are some very different accounts from my sources of the role this played in stalling the Vienna talks than his. So here's the story told from the western perspective. -4-

@tparsi There is an acknowledgement that the lowering of Iran's guarantee demand was one bit of a bunch of evidence that the @araghchi team under @HassanRouhani was negotiating in earnest in search of a deal -- whether or not other forces in Tehran were determined to scupper this. -5-

@tparsi @araghchi @HassanRouhani The central U.S. position however was crystal clear. The JCPOA deal is the deal as it was agreed. There were no guarantees given never to walk away, it was a political deal with political commitments. If Iran wanted to change the deal, the U.S. would have its demands too. -6-

@tparsi @araghchi @HassanRouhani It was clear -- indeed it was said publicly -- that a permanent guarantee was off the table. No U.S. president had the power to bind a future administration on a non-treaty that didn't win full senate approval.-7-

@tparsi @araghchi @HassanRouhani However the administration was also clear that any legal guarantee would simply be beyond the deal as it was agreed. However they were perfectly willing to make very clear in the text a political commitment to implement and stick to the deal. As Malley said recently...-8-

@tparsi @araghchi @HassanRouhani they weren't going to make whole effort to return to the JCPOA only to find spurious reasons to exit again. And there were serious negotiations about what that wording shld look like to give Iran enough assurance and to allow the Iran team to present that at home as a gain -9-

I heard at the time there were multiple discussions around the guarantee language. And it is clear that this was one of the points on which a real gap continued to exist between the U.S. and Iranian position. But the fundamental point is those negotiations were ongoing. -10-

So then we turn to the question of whether this was the straw that broke the camel's back during Vienna talks. From reporting at the time and going back on this issue since, I see absolutely no evidence this was what scuppered the talks. The Araghchi team & western sources...-11-

were publc that they were making progress, that an agreement was possible in the coming weeks and that gaps -- while significant on a few key points -- had narrowed. Issues around sanctions, wording around follow-on talks, the guarantee issue & crucially fate of centrifuges.-12-

were all still unresolved. And negotiations -- incremental, hard, sometimes tense and time-consuming -- were continuing across all these issues. My understanding remains that most western sources, Russia & possibly the Iran team believed the talks would pick up again in July.-13-

Of course, none of this is to say that the guarantee may not have turned out to be the one issue that scuppered an agreement in the end under Rouhani. Perhaps it was the ultimate red line for Tehran. But we'll never know that now. -14-

What we do know is that since June 20th, the talks have stopped because Iran was not ready to return to Vienna. And we still have no date. It behooves common sense to argue that staying away from talks, instead of returning to talks, was the place to resolve this issue -- -15-

or perhaps to fail to resolve this. Western sources understand that the U.S. exit in 2018 made Iran's push for a guarantee a perfectly logical demand. Perhaps it was a gap that cannot be bridged. But the way to test that is through negotiations -- ideally direct ones. -16-