US Warns Iran Not to Use Talks to Accelerate Nuclear Program

US envoy: We won't go for it

US Envoy Robert Malley warns that the administration is prepared to exert pressure on Iran if they use the resume Vienna nuclear talks as a pretext for accelerating their nuclear program. He warned “it simply won’t work.”

This reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of Iran’s past actions, or at the very least an attempt to totally revise the history of the peace process. Iran’s parliament has ordered some nuclear moves in the context of nuclear talks.

Far from doing it to accelerate the program or using talks as a pretext, those moves have uniformly been ordered when the US started to pull away from the talks, or conversely when Iran’s civilian program was sabotaged by Israel and the US refused to criticize the intervention.

Iran’s stated position and actions reflect a position of being interested in making a negotiated deal that they can count on being honored, no small matter after the long slog to the initial deal led almost immediately to the US withdrawing from it.

Iran has since sought assurances that if the US agreed to return to the deal this time they won’t immediately, unilaterally withdraw again. It’s been tough to get any assurances, with the US open to return to the deal but wanting to seem “tough” on Iran by constantly threatening to withdraw.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.