Thread by @lrozen

just to note, much of Israeli national security establishment recently on record to acknowledge trump leaving jcpoa was actually a catastrophe & got only worse outcomes. while current Israel MFA senior officials going around returning to deal would be bad & an interim deal bad.

have not taken the latter too seriously because, of the Iranian side, neither seems imminent.

but there seems to be a true strategic incoherence on the Israeli side.

Have idly wondered, if the increased Israeli agitation against an interim deal is out of some sense there will be any outcome from the meeting next week. would be shocked if there is any outcome.

no outcome almost purely because of the Iranian side. who surely want a few rounds to rub everyone else’s faces in their power, to say when they show up, etc.

when the new Iran nuclear negotiator was the deputy nuclear negotiator, I used to travel, 2 days each way, to negotiations they insisted occur in countries like Kazakhstan & Iraq. months were spent on their demands for where negotiations would be held. there was never any outcome

they experienced their sense of power by exercising their power over determining the logistics of where and when the talks, who they could make fly here or there, not by any achievement of a deal. whether they have the will or capacity to make a deal this time, am not sure, but

almost certainly, it will not be fast.

&, if you want to get truly depressed, those were in the days when Iran would actually sit at the table with the US among the other parties. now, they apparently still won’t agree the US can be in the room. while insisting their only goal in the talks is the lifting of US sanx

so, you have to basically double the amount of time for translation, & then double the time again to relay the info via third parties to the US and back. but none of it really matters if the Iran side doesn’t really want to get a deal. but instead wants to send a delegation of 40

to Vienna to look like they are the hot stuff back home.

and one suspects, if they think sending a delegation of 40 to vienna now, during a covid lockdown, makes them look like hot stuff back home, one might expect they would want a few more rounds of that, at minimum, to get anywhere.

My impression is, these are not like the Bush 41 or even Bush 43 wings of the Iranian conservatives. They are still more obsessed with their own domestic status than professional achievement of a diplomatic outcome.

I guess the Israeli agitation could be out of a sense there would be no outcome this week on a deal, then a subsequent western move to try for an interim deal. Israel trying to signal in advance that it rejects that.