Archive for the ‘Iran’ Category

U.S. reacts to Iranian comments on draft nuclear deal – POLITICO

The U.S. response is expected to focus on final sticking points related to Iranian demands for economic guarantees and sanctions relief. U.S. officials were tight-lipped about the substance of the response. When asked for details, the official familiar with the matter said the response contained a bunch of words and sentences and paragraphs.

A person familiar with the U.S. response said it focused on the issue of economic guarantees. The person declined to give details, but said the response falls short of Irans expectations. So now we have to see if they realize this is as good as it gets or decide to push for more.

In recent days, European officials have expressed increasing optimism they could revive the 2015 nuclear deal, which lifted many U.S. sanctions on Iran in exchange for strict but temporary curbs on its nuclear program. Western officials say that a number of technical questions related to economic guarantees and sanctions remain open but that other main sticking points have been resolved, making an agreement more likely. But they still cautioned that it would require tough political decisions both in Washington and Tehran in order to close a deal.

On Wednesday, Josep Borrell, the EUs foreign policy chief, told the Spanish news agency EFE that time was of the essence: We have only days left, a few days [to conclude the deal], because after the summer we will enter into a new political dynamic, he said, speaking on the margins of the Quo Vadis Europa conference in Santander, Spain.

Meanwhile, Israel Prime Minister Yair Lapid on Wednesday urged the Biden administration to abandon the talks with Iran, saying that the emerging deal failed to meet the standards set by President Biden himself: preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear state.

Lapid also warned that the frozen funds Iran would receive as part of a restored deal worth an estimated $100 billion would enable the regime in Tehran to fund even more malign activities in the region.

This money will fund the Revolutionary Guard, Lapid said. It will fund more attacks on American bases in the Middle East. It will be used to strengthen Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Diplomats from Britain, France, Germany, Iran, Russia, China and the United States have spent almost 17 months negotiating a revival of the 2015 nuclear accord in Vienna. The talks have been close to collapse several times.

But since the last physical meeting of the parties at the beginning of August in Vienna, some of the most complicated stumbling blocks appear to have been resolved. They were related to whether the U.S. would remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guards from the Foreign Terrorist Organization list, as well as to the fate of an investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency into traces of nuclear material found at three sites in Iran.

John Kirby, spokesperson for the National Security Council, confirmed on Wednesday that Iran dropped some key demands, allowing the two sides to make some progress.

We are closer now than we were even just a couple of weeks ago because Iran made the decision to make some concessions, Kirby said. But he cautioned that a lot of gaps remain. Were not there yet.

Iran is still seeking further guarantees that a future U.S. administration would not leave the deal again. The Biden administration has stressed on numerous occasions that it will uphold its obligations but cannot provide a legal guarantee for its successors.

The prospect of former U.S. President Donald Trump or a like-minded Republican returning to power has overshadowed the talks since they began in Vienna in April 2021. Trump, who called the original deal horrible and one-sided, left the agreement in 2018.

Iran wants assurances built into the new text to cushion the potentially negative effects on the Iranian economy should the deal collapse again.

One such guarantee that is built into the draft text, according to Western officials, would allow foreign companies to continue their operations in Iran for two-and-a-half years without fear of being sanctioned, even if this renewed agreement falls apart.

Tehran would also receive what it calls an inherent guarantee that enables it to ramp up its uranium enrichment capacity fairly quickly in order to discourage Washington from scuttling the agreement once more. This will be achieved in part by allowing Iran to store some centrifuges and electronic equipment inside the country under the seal of the International Atomic Energy Agency instead of destroying them, a Western official with knowledge of the matter said.

Under the 2015 deal, Iran is only allowed to enrich uranium up to 3.67 percent purity, maintain a stockpile of 300 kilograms of uranium, and permitted to use only very basic IR-1 centrifuges machines that spin uranium gas at high speed for enrichment purposes.

It has exceeded those limits dramatically in response to the U.S. exit from the deal.

Iran currently has a stockpile of some 3,800 kilograms of enriched uranium some of which has been enriched up to 60 percent, which is close to weapons grade. Iran has also installed thousands of advanced centrifuges in breach of the 2015 deal, including IR-6 machines that spin much faster.

Should the 2015 deal be restored, Iran will be forced back into compliance with the previous limits but it will be allowed to mothball the advanced centrifuges, including the electronic infrastructure needed to operate them.

Even if the U.S. lifts nuclear-related sanctions under a new deal, numerous other American sanctions on Iran would remain, targeting the country over its support for terrorist groups and human rights abuses.

Those additional sanctions are the result of Trumps maximum pressure campaign on Iran, which entailed not only reimposing nuclear-related sanctions, but also adding new penalties. That has made the Biden teams job harder as it has tried to figure out which sanctions to lift and which to leave in place.

Now, Iran wants to make sure those remaining U.S. sanctions will not deter European and other non-American companies from doing business on its soil.

One Trump move that infuriated Tehran was the designation of Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a powerful military branch, as a terrorist group. U.S. President Joe Biden has said he would not remove the IRGC from that terrorist list. On Wednesday, the U.S. struck an IRGC compound of bunkers in Syria, as retaliation for a strike by an IRGC-affiliated militia on a U.S. base.

Complicating matters is the IRGCs vast economic footprint throughout Iran, with major economic projects in key industries.

The current draft deal, according to Western officials, will allow European and other non-American companies to do business with entities that have transactions with companies owned by Irans IRGC.

While some critics of the deal see that language as a weak point, allowing Tehran to use proxies to conduct business, other analysts say its not a significant change to how the United States currently approaches such situations.

Brian OToole, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council and sanctions expert, said that the language in the draft deal signifies no change from current rules. He says it is just a restatement of existing rules in a more prominent place. Similar statements have appeared in various official JCPOA documents from 2015 and 2016, according to OToole.

Earlier in the discussions, Iran also insisted it wanted the International Atomic Energy Agency to close a probe into the origins of multiple traces of nuclear material found at three previously undeclared sites in Iran as a precondition for its return to the nuclear deal.

Western officials suspect that conclusive proof into the origins of the nuclear material could establish that Iran had a clandestine nuclear weapons program that ran until at least 2003. Iran, however, insists its nuclear program has always been solely for peaceful purposes.

EU officials have offered a proposal that would close the IAEA investigation if Iran can offer the agency credible answers about the uranium traces origins before the so-called reimplementation day the day the revived nuclear deal would go into effect. But the proposal would also enable Iran to block reimplementation day, should the probe remain open.

Iran seems to have agreed to this EU proposal since it did not raise the issue again in its reply last week to the final EU text, according to three senior Western diplomats.

But it also means that even if an agreement on restoring the nuclear deal is reached in the coming days, there may still be pitfalls ahead for its full implementation.

Lara Seligman contributed reporting from Washington, D.C.

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U.S. reacts to Iranian comments on draft nuclear deal - POLITICO

Biden’s Indifference Has Given Iran the Upper Hand in Iraq – Foreign Policy

About six weeks ago, U.S. President Joe Biden boasted in the Washington Post that the Middle East was more stable and secure than when he inherited the region from his predecessor, Donald Trump. Among other examples, Biden named Iraq, where rocket attacks against U.S. troops and diplomats had diminished. While hes correct that fewer Americans have been targeted, this single metric alone is hardly enough to support his claim of stability. By nearly every other measure, Iraq is less stable today than in January 2021and U.S. interests there more threatened.

Its a remarkable turn of events. Just 10 months ago, Iraq improbably appeared poised to form a government committed to diminishing the destructive role played by Iran-backed militias and enforcing Iraqi sovereignty against its bigger neighbor.Now, Irans political allies in Iraq have the upper hand, the countrys fragile democracy is threatened as never before, and, for the first time in a decade, violence even among Shiite groups is a possibility.

It didnt have to be this way. The big winner in last Octobers parliamentary elections was Moqtada al-Sadr, a populist Shiite cleric who during the campaign called for an Iraq dominated by neither Washington nor Tehran.Sadrs alliance secured a plurality of the 329 seats in the Council of Representatives, defeating Iranian-backed Shiite Islamist parties that represent the political arms of the militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).

About six weeks ago, U.S. President Joe Biden boasted in the Washington Post that the Middle East was more stable and secure than when he inherited the region from his predecessor, Donald Trump. Among other examples, Biden named Iraq, where rocket attacks against U.S. troops and diplomats had diminished. While hes correct that fewer Americans have been targeted, this single metric alone is hardly enough to support his claim of stability. By nearly every other measure, Iraq is less stable today than in January 2021and U.S. interests there more threatened.

Its a remarkable turn of events. Just 10 months ago, Iraq improbably appeared poised to form a government committed to diminishing the destructive role played by Iran-backed militias and enforcing Iraqi sovereignty against its bigger neighbor.Now, Irans political allies in Iraq have the upper hand, the countrys fragile democracy is threatened as never before, and, for the first time in a decade, violence even among Shiite groups is a possibility.

It didnt have to be this way. The big winner in last Octobers parliamentary elections was Moqtada al-Sadr, a populist Shiite cleric who during the campaign called for an Iraq dominated by neither Washington nor Tehran.Sadrs alliance secured a plurality of the 329 seats in the Council of Representatives, defeating Iranian-backed Shiite Islamist parties that represent the political arms of the militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).

Sadr is no panacea. Following the 2003 U.S. invasion, Sadrs Mahdi Army became a leading adversary of the U.S. presence in Iraq, and the cleric was nearly killed by U.S. forces. More recently, though, Sadr has positioned himself as a nationalist, an anti-corruption crusader, and a critic of PMF military activity in Iraq targeting U.S. diplomatic and military personnel.

To be sure, we do not know whether the mercurial cleric, once in power, would eventually have opted for an Iranian-style theocracy, with himself as the self-styled supreme leader.In the wake of the election, at least, Sadr was poised to establish a majoritarian government coalition of Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds that excluded Iranian-backed parties. He and his parliamentary allies might have been able to exert Iraqi sovereignty and fight corruptiona major goal of a massive countrywide protest movement in 2019.

That government never materialized. Government formation was delayed by Irans allies: PMF groups Asaib Ahl al-Haq, Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, and Kataib Hezbollah reportedly threatened to overrun the government, attempted to assassinate Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, rained down rockets and drones on the Kurds, and bombed the home of the speaker of parliament, Mohamed al-Halbousi. Admittedly, Sadr and his Kurdish partners didnt exactly seize their moment, but at least they were making slow progress.

Then the Iran-backed Coordination Framework coalitionSadrs Shiite rivalsplayed their ace card. To prevent Sadr, the Kurds, and Sunnis, who had secured a majority of the seats in parliament, from selecting a prime minister and cabinet, the Iran-backed opposition used their control of the corrupt judiciary to move the goalposts. The Federal Supreme Court ruled that nowfor the first timenot just a simple majority but a two-thirds supermajority would be needed to form a government. Unable to reach that threshold, Sadrs 73 members of parliament resigned en masse in June, and their seats were reallocated to Iran-aligned parties.

Who masterminded this judicial coup? None other than Nouri al-Maliki, who served as premier from 2006 to 2014 and is best known for his prodigious corruption and vicious sectarianism, which in no small part contributed to the rise of the Islamic State. In January 2021, he reportedly narrowly escaped being sanctioned by the Trump administration. As kingmaker, Maliki would once again be pulling the strings.

Sadr and Maliki have been rivals for the mantle of Shiite leadership in Iraq since at least 2008, when government forces led by Maliki attacked and defeated Sadrs Mahdi Army in the Battle of Basra. Given this history of bad blood, Sadr responded to the Coordination Frameworks July 25 nomination of a Maliki allyMohammed Shia al-Sudanifor prime minister by directing his supporters to occupy the parliament and prevent a vote for prime minister, which they duly did. It was as if Sadr had taken a page from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionists in Washington.

Today, Sadrists no longer inhabit the legislature but continue to camp out in the International Zone just across from the parliament, blocking Sudanis election. Meanwhile, Sadr is calling for the dissolution of parliament and for early elections to be held under a revised election lawdemands opposed by the Iran-backed Coordination Framework. As the impasse drags on, tensions among Iraqs Shiites are spiking. Regardless of how the standoff is resolved, Iran will likely emerge with a strengthened position in Baghdad, thwarting the will of an Iraqi electorate that overwhelmingly voted for change last October.

To be sure, its not clear that Washington could have prevented this outcome. In any event, it doesnt appear that the administration made any concerted effort to forestall this scenario. In nearly nine months between the elections and the Sadr deputies walkout, public records show, senior U.S. State Department and National Security Council officials visited Iraq only twice, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken made just a small handful of calls to Iraqi decision-makers in an attempt to affect developments on the ground. The excellent new U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Alina Romanowski, may have pressed the cause after her arrival in Baghdad this June as well. But by all appearances, she did so without sufficient backing from Washington.

The absence of high-level administration engagement in Iraqs post-election attempts to form a government was not an oversight but a purposeful decision. As one anonymous senior Biden administration official said rather indifferently last December, their plan was to leave it to the Iraqis to sort out.

Washington doesnt typically weigh in on election outcomes in foreign countries, preferring instead to focus on supporting institutions. Regrettably, Iraqi is not a typical case, given that its fledgling democracy has been struggling to survive under the pressure of Irans long arm in Iraq, the approximately 100,000-strong PMF militia. Elections in Iraq could ultimately have contributed toward weakening Irans stranglehold, but U.S. disengagement during the government formation process left a void eagerly filled by Tehran.

Meanwhile, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps chief Esmail Qaani and other senior Iranian officials visited Iraq no fewer than 10 times in recent months to threaten, cajole, and convince their local partners and adversaries how to sort out the next government. While the number of visits alone doesnt measure U.S. interest, the disparity does suggest that Washingtons approach was laissez-faire. The administration did not employ Washingtons diplomatic and economic leverage to protect a process under attack from Tehran.

All this matters because Iraq is important to the United States and its interests in the region. Not only did thousands of Americans lose life and limb to help build a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, but, unlike Afghanistan, Iraq really is a counterterrorism partner with a real chance at becoming a full-fledged democracy. The country stands on vital geostrategic territory, holds the worlds fifth-largest oil reserves, and is on the front line against Irans effort to expand its influence throughout the Middle East.

As Washington appears to inch closer to a nuclear deal with Tehran, countering the latters meddling in Baghdad has taken on added urgencyboth for the United States and for its regional partners. After Iraqis bravely voted for parties opposed to Iranian domination, the Biden administrations subsequent hands-off approach to the government formation process has allowed the mullahs to steal victory from the jaws of defeat. Inexplicably, it appears that Iraqwhere the United States has fought two major wars in recent decadesis no longer a priority for Washington. Unfortunately, it is for Tehran.

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Iran says it will only accept inspections agreed in 2015 nuclear deal – Reuters

The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

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DUBAI, Aug 24 (Reuters) - Iran will not allow inspections beyond what is in a 2015 nuclear deal, the country's nuclear chief said on Wednesday, as the United States prepares to respond to a proposal to revive Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers.

"We are committed to inspections in the framework of the nuclear deal that are linked to nuclear restrictions which we have accepted in the past... Not one word more, not one word less," said Mohammad Eslami, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, according to a video carried by state media.

A senior U.S. official told Reuters on Monday that Iran has dropped some of its main demands on resurrecting the deal to rein in Tehran's nuclear programme, including its insistence that international inspectors close some probes of its atomic program, bringing the possibility of an agreement closer. read more

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But Eslami appeared to contradict that, saying the probes should be closed "before the implementation day" if the 2015 nuclear deal is revived, the state news agency IRNA reported.

Washington aims to respond soon to a draft agreement proposed by the European Union that would bring back the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that former President Donald Trump abandoned and current President Joe Biden has sought to revive.

Iran has insisted the nuclear pact can only be salvaged if the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) drops its claims about Tehran's nuclear work. Washington and other Western powers view Tehran's demand as outside the scope of reviving the deal.

In June, the U.N. nuclear watchdog's 35-nation Board of Governors overwhelmingly passed a resolution, drafted by the United States, France, Britain and Germany, which criticised Iran for failing to explain uranium traces found at three undeclared sites.

On Wednesday, Eslami repeated Iran's assertion that claims of unexplained uranium traces were perpetrated by exiled Iranian dissidents and Iran's arch-enemy Israel, IRNA reported.

In response to the resolution, Iran expanded further its underground uranium enrichment by installing cascades of more efficient advanced centrifuges and also by removing essentially all the IAEA's monitoring equipment installed under the 2015 deal.

Meanwhile, Nour News, a website affiliated with Tehran's top national security body, rejected Washington's assertion that Iran had dropped some of its main demands.

"The Americans are seeking to suggest that Iran has retreated in the talks but... it was Washington that had left the nuclear deal and it is the U.S. government that has retreated to its previous positions if it returns to the accord," Nour News said on Twitter.

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Reporting by Dubai newsroomEditing by Tomasz Janowski

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Iran says it will only accept inspections agreed in 2015 nuclear deal - Reuters

Foes and friends of Iran deal ready for another D.C. clash – POLITICO

On Thursday, for instance, James Risch of Idaho, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a deal critic, tweeted that Iran was pushing President Joe Biden to accept terms that could let it accelerate nuclear weapons work. The White House National Security Council took the unusual step of tweeting a rebuke: Nothing here is true. We would never accept such terms.

A White House official on Friday declined to get into details when pressed on the administrations messaging plans, saying it was premature to talk about tactics or strategy since theres not yet a deal to revive the agreement.

If a deal is reached, the official added, we are fully prepared to advocate for it publicly, brief the Hill, experts and stakeholders, and coordinate with allies and partners, as we have done throughout this process and consistent with our approach to all policy priorities.

The back-and-forth this time is likely to be less intense than in 2015, when President Barack Obamas administration was mocked by the right for trying to create a media echo chamber to sell the deal to the public.

But once again, the geopolitical stakes are high, and the fight will likely center on Congress, where lawmakers will get a chance to review, in essence, the deal to revive the deal. And while the White House can once again count on a presidential veto as a backstop in the unlikely case lawmakers get enough votes to kill the revival effort, this time there will be a looming midterm election to consider.

To be clear, the negotiations to restore the 2015 nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, could still collapse or be delayed. Iran is pushing for changes to the proposed road map to restore the agreement, and the U.S. is weighing options. That said, after more than a year of talks, theres noticeable optimism among the various parties that the deal can soon be revived.

So the battle lines are hardening once more on think tank panels, television appearances and in quiet conversations in secure government facilities.

Israel, the foreign government most vocally opposed to the nuclear deal, is sending its national security adviser to Washington next week to air the countrys well-known concerns directly with the White House. Meantime, Israeli officials are turning to the media to publicize their reservations and take jabs at Biden and his aides.

In recent comments to Axios, Israeli officials even questioned whether the U.S. president and his team were fully aware of what Israelis argue are concessions included in the proposed road map to restore the 2015 agreement.

Thats the type of insinuation that draws eye-rolls and fury from people in and close to the administration, who deny there are any new concessions and say the president is fully looped in.

We are in intensive and constant discussions with Israelis on Iran, the White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic, said Friday. There is no greater supporter of Israels security than Joe Biden.

Israeli leaders this time are likely to be less openly hostile than seven years ago, when then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even delivered a speech to a joint meeting of Congress in an attempt to kill the deal. The current Israeli government is led by caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid, and the country has an election set for later this year.

But Israeli officials have a strong ally in Washington: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC was reported to have spent tens of millions of dollars in 2015 to try to kill the original deal. When asked what AIPAC planned this year, a spokesperson didnt directly answer the question but said the group has serious concerns about the revival effort.

Meanwhile, J Street, the left-leaning pro-Israel group, plans to rally support to revive the agreement. Its representatives caution that they want to review the road map to the revival first, but if its what they expect, we have a whole campaign ready to go, said Dylan Williams, a senior vice president with the group.

That campaign will include everything from phone-calling blitzes to ads on social media, he said. The campaign is aimed largely at moderate Democrats, some of whom did not support the agreement in 2015, and new lawmakers whose positions may not yet be clear.

The 2015 Iran deal lifted many U.S. and international economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for severe restrictions on Tehrans nuclear program.

Then-President Donald Trump abandoned the deal in 2018, saying it was too narrow and time-limited. He reimposed the original sanctions on Iran and heaped on new ones as well. A year later, after other countries party to the agreement were unable to offer it sanctions relief, Iran began violating the deals terms. Although Iran has always insisted it has no intention of building a nuclear weapon, it is now much closer to that possibility.

At the same time, as the talks to restore the deal have taken place, Iran has been accused of kidnapping and assassination attempts against Americans, including former Trump-era national security adviser John Bolton. Some of those plots are believed to be in retaliation for the Trump administrations killing of top Iranian military commander, Qassem Soleimani, in 2020. U.S. officials also are investigating whether Iran played a direct role in a recent attack that badly wounded novelist Salman Rushdie.

Michael Singh, an analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said such developments imposed a greater sense of realism on the debate than in 2015, when some deal advocates hoped it would prompt bigger foreign policy shifts.

What we see from the administration is more realism and more resignation, said Singh, a longtime skeptic of the agreement. I think they are less enthusiastic about it. You wont hear any arguments that this is going to transform the U.S.-Iran relations. But I think what you will hear very loudly is this is our only option.

In 2015, Obama and his aides held little back, blitzing social and traditional media to push through what they viewed as a critical piece of their foreign policy legacy. The administrations effort included more than 100 engagements between Obama and lawmakers. Ultimately, the Obama team secured enough support among Senate Democrats that Republicans couldnt break a filibuster in their attempt to stop the deal.

One reason there could be a congressional debate this time is that Congress passed a 2015 law that gave it the power to review any such agreements with Iran. Lawmakers have argued that the legislation, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act or INARA, allows Congress the right to review the deal to restore the deal.

Biden administration officials at first suggested they disagreed with that interpretation, but eventually agreed to submit whatever deal is reached in Vienna. Those discussions between Iran and the U.S. have been indirect, with European officials have been acting as go-betweens.

One organization thats already battle-hardened as far as such public relations fights go is the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The hawkish think tank has long opposed the original nuclear deal.

Joe Dougherty, a spokesperson for FDD, said the think tank plans to ramp up its use of panels, op-eds and other traditional means to get across its view that the 2015 deal should not be restored.

One of its analysts arguments, he said, is that whats being restored isnt really the original deal but a lesser deal.

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Foes and friends of Iran deal ready for another D.C. clash - POLITICO

Iran Offers To Help Europe With Oil And Gas Deliveries This Winter – OilPrice.com

Iran has offered its assistance to Europe in the form of oil and gas deliveries for the winter, per a statement by Iranian Oil Minister Javad Oji.

According to a report in Iran Front News, the minister noted that energy prices were out of control, pointing to Germany as an example and saying businesses there might have to shut down because of excessive energy costs.

The official said Iran could help relieve the price pressure by exporting more gas to Europe but pointed out that the Europeans had done this to themselves. He also predicted that oil and gas buyers would face a difficult winter this year.

In the meantime, Iran will be exporting more oil and gas condensate to buyers in Latin America and Asia, as well as parts of Europe, Oji also said.

Iran has been expanding its oil exports despite U.S. sanctions this year, with the bulk of shipments going to China. In recent months, Russian crude has become a major competitor because, like Iranian crude, it sells at a discount. According to analysts, the Iranians simply cut their prices further to stay competitive.

"Iranian crude was facing strong competition from Russian Urals in July as the non-sanctioned barrels were offered at similar discount levels. However, as the price difference of the two widened, Chinese refiners may turn back to cheaper Iranian barrels in August," a Vortexa analyst said earlier this month, as quoted by Tehran Times.

The European Union has been trying to broker a deal between the United States and Iran on the latter's nuclear future for more than a year now and recently submitted its final proposal to the two sides.

According to a recent statement by a U.S. official, Iran had dropped another of its demands, which suggests a deal might be in sight. Yet the report comes on the heels of another, in which Iran accused the U.S. of procrastinating, so nothing is certain yet.

The return of Iran to the international oil markets would go a long way towards offsetting the effects of the upcoming European Union embargo on Russian crude, which is set to take effect later this year.By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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Iran Offers To Help Europe With Oil And Gas Deliveries This Winter - OilPrice.com