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U.S. President Joe Bidens administration opened big-power talks this week in Vienna to determine whether steady advances to Tehrans nuclear program render the landmark Iran nuclear deal a corpse that cannot be revived, as one senior U.S. official recently put it to reporters, or if theres still a chance to salvage the accord.

The United States has cast the eighth and latest round of negotiations as a last chance for achieving a diplomatic settlement of its nuclear dispute with Iran. U.S. officials warn that the window for reviving the 2015 nuclear pactknown as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)is nearly shut. Iran has weeks, not months, to strike a deal or curtail its nuclear activities to avoid facing the prospect of stepped-up coercive measures, from additional sanctions to the threat of military action, a senior U.S. official told Foreign Policy.

Either we reach a deal quickly or they slow down their program, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity given the negotiations confidential nature. If they do neither, [its] hard to see how [the] JCPOA survives past that period.

U.S. President Joe Bidens administration opened big-power talks this week in Vienna to determine whether steady advances to Tehrans nuclear program render the landmark Iran nuclear deal a corpse that cannot be revived, as one senior U.S. official recently put it to reporters, or if theres still a chance to salvage the accord.

The United States has cast the eighth and latest round of negotiations as a last chance for achieving a diplomatic settlement of its nuclear dispute with Iran. U.S. officials warn that the window for reviving the 2015 nuclear pactknown as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)is nearly shut. Iran has weeks, not months, to strike a deal or curtail its nuclear activities to avoid facing the prospect of stepped-up coercive measures, from additional sanctions to the threat of military action, a senior U.S. official told Foreign Policy.

Either we reach a deal quickly or they slow down their program, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity given the negotiations confidential nature. If they do neither, [its] hard to see how [the] JCPOA survives past that period.

Weve seen modest steps in recent weeks, but the Iranians are not working at a pace required to get a breakthrough in the coming weeks, the U.S. official added.

Russia and Iran pushed back on the need to establish a fixed deadline for the talks to conclude, with Moscow contending Iran is still far enough away from developing a weapon capable of delivering a nuclear warhead. (Iran claims it has no intention of pursuing nuclear weapons.)

This sense of urgency is a little bit exaggerated, said Mikhail Ulyanov, Russias chief nuclear negotiator and ambassador to Vienna. Yes, its urgent, but lets be prudent; lets [not] set up artificial deadlines.

In recent weeks, the Biden administration has been signaling its intention to tighten the economic screws on Iran if the talks, which resumed on Dec. 27, cant bring Iran back into full compliance with the pact. Andrea Gacki, head of the Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Assets Control, led a delegation to the United Arab Emirates as part of an effort to strengthen the enforcement of existing U.S. sanctions, warning banking and petroleum executives in the UAE to abide by the sanctions or face U.S. penalties.

Biden cited restoring the Iran nuclear pact as one of his top foreign-policy priorities, appointing Robert Malley as special envoy for nuclear talks during his first eight days in office. The 2015 deal was the singular diplomatic achievement of the Obama administration, a painstakingly negotiated pact that imposed a complex series of constraints on Irans nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

But then-U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018, allowing Iran to rebuild and accelerate some of the most sensitive elements of its nuclear program, including the installation of more advanced centrifuges and the production of highly enriched uranium, while restricting international scrutiny of the program.

The day after the seventh round of nuclear talks resumed in Vienna on Nov. 29, Iran began enriching a higher-grade uraniumsome 20 percent puritywith a cascade of more advanced IR-6 centrifuges than permitted by the pact. Irans breakout timethe amount of time it would take to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a bombhas shrunk from about 12 months at the time the nuclear pact was concluded to about one month, experts said. It could take Iran another two years to produce a nuclear warhead.

Israel recently pressed Bidens national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, to either negotiate more far-reaching constraints on Irans nuclear program or tighten the economic noose. In an interview with the New York Times, Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Yair Lapid said the best outcome would be a stronger deal than the JCPOA, which could ensure Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon, and the worst would be a bad deal that provides Tehran enough wiggle room to build a nuclear weapons program at some stage in the future. Second best would be no deal but tightening the sanctions and making sure Iran cannot go forward, he told the Times.

The Biden administration has focused on simply returning to the original deal, but that effort has been strained by even more than Irans nuclear advances. The United States carried out several rounds of talks with the Iranian government of former President Hassan Rouhani, who struck the original agreement with the Obama administration. But the start of a new president, Ebrahim Raisi, has scrambled those calculations. Iran replaced its nuclear negotiating team and appointed a hard-liner, Ali Bagheri Kani, to lead talks. He has backtracked on commitments his predecessors made.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, recently accused Irans new negotiating team of staking out vague, unrealistic, maximalist, and unconstructive positions on sanctions, reneging on compromises it made during the previous six months of talks.

We are fully prepared to lift sanctions inconsistent with our JCPOA commitments, which would allow Iran to receive the economic benefits of the deal, Thomas-Greenfield told the United Nations Security Council on Dec. 14. And were convinced that, if Iran approaches talks in Vienna with urgency and good faith, we can quickly reach and implement an understanding on mutual return [to the JCPOA]. We cannot, however, allow Iran to accelerate its nuclear program and slow-walk its nuclear diplomacy.

European powers have been losing patience with Iran but said they are reluctant to dump the diplomatic track. In mid-December, representatives from Britain, France, and Germany blamed Irans new negotiating team for the new unreasonable demands. Time is running out, they said in a joint statement. Without swift progress, in light of Irans fast-forwarding of its nuclear program, the JCPOA will very soon become an empty shell.

In recent weeks, European diplomats have received instructions from their capitals to be prepared, in the event of a breakdown in talks, for the possible reimposition of sanctions on Iran. The so-called snapback provision of the 2015 nuclear pact permits signatories to reimpose a wide range of U.N. sanctions if they deem Iran is in breach of the agreement.

Since then, Iran has taken a number of steps to ease diplomatic pressure, including meeting a demand by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to provide access to video cameras installed in an Iranian reprocessing facility in Karaj, Iran. That agreement, negotiated with Russias help, headed off an immediate collision with the United States, which threatened to seek formal censure of Iran at the IAEA, a move Tehran said would drive it out of the deal for good.

The process ebbs and flows for us, one European diplomat said. There has been slightly better mood music over the last couple of weeks, citing the Karaj agreement, a bit more flexibility over the scope of nuclear talks, and Irans acting somewhat less troublesome in the region by refraining from attacks on vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran is being as reasonable as one can ever expect the Iranians to be, the diplomat added. The alternative is worse. We are still pretty open-eyed about what Iran is up to, but the cost of dropping out and making it all about confrontation is not in anyones interest.

Bagheri Kani, Irans chief negotiator, opened talks Monday with representatives of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security CouncilBritain, China, France, Russia, and the United Statesas well as Germany and the European Union, which is serving as facilitator of the talks. The talks could continue through the end of January or early February 2022.

The Iranian delegation is seeking a sweeping rollback of sanctions and demanding assurances from the Biden administration that any agreement it strikes will be honored by future U.S. administrationsan assurance the president may not have the power to grant.

Despite the obstacles, Russias Ulyanov said: Frankly, Im rather optimistic at this stage. I see no objective reasons for being skeptical.

I cannot guarantee that an agreement will be reached, but I believe that chances are very, very high as the main prerequisite for success is already there, Ulyanov added. All countries, all participants, including Iran and the United States, look for the restoration of the nuclear deal.

Ulyanov said China and Russia persuaded Iran to back away from some of its maximalist positions, including its insistence that the talks focus only on sanctions, not the nuclear issue. In the end, he said, the Iranians agreed to begin negotiations on the basis of a draft hammered out by the previous Iranian government this past spring.

Ulyanov said now is not the time to threaten Iran with greater pressure. Even if they produce a significant amount of nuclear material, so what. It cannot be used without a warhead, and the Iranians do not have warheads.

Meanwhile, there is a risk of dangerous miscalculations on both sides. Ali Vaez, the Iran expert at the International Crisis Group, said although China and Russia have urged the United States and European powers to give Irans negotiating team more time and show greater flexibility, it is difficult for the West to show flexibility. There is fear on the Western side that Iran is not serious about the talks, that its wasting time.

From a technological standpoint, the Iranian nuclear program is reaching the point of no return, Vaez added. If Iran walks away from the deal and ratchets up its nuclear program, then I think the gloves will come off quicklyin a matter of days. The United States will switch to coercive diplomacy, and we might see the reimposition of U.N. sanctions and, shortly after, the specter of war.

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US Gives Iran Weeks to Strike Nuclear Bargain or Slow Its Nuclear Program - Foreign Policy

Dec 28 (Reuters) - The United States on Tuesday expressed caution over upbeat comments by Iran and Russia about talks in Vienna to salvage the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, saying it was still too soon to say if Tehran had returned to the negotiations with a constructive approach.

Iran and Russia both gave upbeat views on Tuesday about talks that kicked off this week to salvage Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal with global powers, although Western nations have said the negotiations are going too slowly.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said a deal was possible in the near future if other parties showed "good faith" while Russian envoy Mikhail Ulyanov said a working group was making "indisputable progress" in the eighth round of talks.

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Speaking at a telephonic press briefing, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said there was some progress in the last round of talks but it was too soon to tell whether Tehran, in the current round, returned to the table to build on those gains.

"It's really too soon to tell whether Iran has returned with a more constructive approach to this round," Price said. "We are now assessing, in the course of these talks, whether the Iranians came back with an agenda of new issues or preliminary solutions to the ones already presented," Price said.

The original agreement lifted sanctions against Tehran in exchange for restrictions on its atomic activities but Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the deal in 2018, a year after he became U.S president. Iran later breached many of the deal's nuclear restrictions and kept pushing well beyond them.

The latest round of indirect talks between Iran and the United States resumed on Monday in Vienna, with Tehran focused on getting U.S. sanctions lifted again, as they were under the original bargain, despite scant progress on reining in its atomic activities. read more

Iran refuses to meet U.S. officials directly, meaning other parties to the deal besides the United States and Iran --- Russia, China, France, Britain, Germany and the European Union -- must shuttle between the two sides.

The seventh round of talks, the first under Iran's new hardline President Ebrahim Raisi, ended 11 days ago after some new Iranian demands were added to a working text.

"The Vienna talks are headed in a good direction," Iranian Minister Amirabdollahian said in comments to reporters broadcast by state media. "We believe that if other parties continue the round of talks which just started with good faith, reaching a good agreement for all parties is possible."

The U.S. delegation, led by Special Envoy Rob Malley, will be in a better position in the coming days to determine whether Iran has to come to the latest round of talks with a 'fundamentally different position," Price said.

Iran insists all U.S. sanctions must be lifted before steps are taken on the nuclear side, while Western negotiators say nuclear and sanctions steps must be balanced in the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA).

URGENT NEGOTIATIONS

European negotiators also said some technical progress had been made in the last round of talks to accommodate Iranian requests, but warned that the parties only had weeks, not months, to salvage the deal.

France, Germany and the United Kingdom said in a statement on Tuesday that technical progress had been made in the last round and the parties now needed to fully focus on the key outstanding issues, particularly nuclear and sanctions.

They said while they were not setting an artificial deadline, there were weeks not months left to strike a deal.

"The negotiation is urgent - and our teams are here to work swiftly and in good faith towards getting a deal."

Ulyanov, the Russian envoy, said on Tuesday that a working group was making progress. "Sanctions lifting is being actively discussed in informal settings," he wrote on Twitter.

The 2015 deal extended the time Iran would need to obtain enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb - if it chose to - to at least a year from about two to three months. Most experts say that time is now less than before the deal, although Iran says it only wants to master nuclear technology for civil uses.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Israel would not automatically oppose a nuclear deal but world powers must take a firmer position.

Israel says it will never allow Iran to get nuclear weapons and that all options are on the table. Israeli leaders have said that a nuclear Iran would pose an existential threat to Israel.

(This story refiles to fix spelling of word 'too' in first paragraph)

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Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Daphne Psaledakis in Washington, Miranda Murray in Berlin, Jeffrey Heller, Dan Williams and Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem, and Dubai newsroom; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by David Clarke and Alistair Bell

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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U.S. sounds caution against optimism by Iran, Russia over nuclear talks - Reuters

The first six rounds of diplomacy this spring, Malley told me, made real progress. In June, he presented a nuclear package that included ending most of Trumps sanctions. The collective sense of everybodyobviously the Europeans, the Russians and Chinese, but also the Iranian delegation at the timewas that we could see the outlines of a deal, he said. If each side was prepared to make the necessary compromises, we could get there.

The talks paused that month, after Irans Presidential election. Hassan Rouhani, the previous President and a reformist, had won in 2013 and 2017 on a platform of engaging with the United States. But Trumps sanctions sabotaged the economic benefits promised by the nuclear accord, so in 2021 a majority of Iranians didnt bother to vote. Ebrahim Raisi, a rigid ideologue and the head of the judiciary, was elected. The U.S. had already sanctioned Raisi, noting his role on a death commission that ordered the execution, in 1988, of some five thousand dissidents. At his Inauguration, in August, Raisi pledged, All the parameters of national power will be strengthened.

Malley had left his suits at the hotel in Vienna, expecting talks to resume before long. But five months passed, and Irans nuclear program advanced further. Malley eventually had his suits shipped home. By the time diplomacy resumed, in late November, Malley told me, Irans program had blown through the limits imposed by the J.C.P.O.A. As theyre making these advances, they are gradually emptying the deal of the nonproliferation benefits for which we bargained, he said. The Biden Administration has pushed back. Were not going to agree to a worse deal because Iran has built up its nuclear program, Malley added. At some point soon, trying to revive the deal would be tantamount to trying to revive a dead corpse. The U.S. and its allies might then have to address a runaway Iranian nuclear program. Without a return to the deal, a senior State Department official said, it is more than plausible, possible, and maybe even probable that Iran will try to become a threshold nuclear state.

The wild card is Israel. In September, at the U.N. General Assembly, the new Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, charged that Irans nuclear program had hit a watershed moment, and so has our tolerance. Words do not stop centrifuges from spinning. Israel is due to soon begin training for possible military strikes on Iran. During a visit to Washington in December, Defense Minister Benny Gantz urged the Biden Administration to hold joint military exercises with Israel. The problem with Irans nuclear program is that, for the time being, there is no diplomatic mechanism to make them stop, Palti told me. There is no deterrent. Iran is no longer afraid. We need to give them the stop sign. U.S. officials counter that Israeli operations have often provoked Tehran and set back diplomacy.

Iran can still reverse technological advances if a deal is reached. Its knowledge, however, is irreversible. Irans nuclear program hit new milestones over the past year, Kelsey Davenport said. As it masters these new capabilities, it will change our understanding about how the country may pursue nuclear weapons down the road. Even if the Biden Administration does broker a return to the accord, Republicans have vowed to scuttle it. In October, Senator Ted Cruz, of Texas, tweeted, Unless any deal w/ Iran is ratified by the Senate as a treatywhich Biden knows will NOT happenit is a 100% certainty that any future Republican president will tear it up. Again.

As the nuclear talks foundered earlier this year, I flew to the Al Asad Airbase, in Iraqs remote western desert, with Kenneth (Frank) McKenzie,Jr., a Marine general from Alabama, who heads U.S. military operations across the Middle East and South Asia. It was part of an extended tour of Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Qatar, and Lebanon. In the cavernous cabin of a C-17, he sat alone in a room-size container draped with an American flag. McKenzies military experience with Iran has been perilous and bloody. When he was a young officer, two hundred and forty-one marines were killed in the 1983 suicide bombing of U.S. peacekeepers in Beirut. It was the largest loss of marine lives in a single day since the battle of Iwo Jima, in the Second World War. The Reagan Administration blamed Iran and its then nascent proxies in Hezbollah. Almost four decades later, McKenzie told me that Tehrans nuclear capabilities were far from the only danger it now poses.

Under Trump, hostilities between the United States and Iran escalated. They peaked in 2020, when Trump ordered the assassination of General Qassem Suleimani, the revered head of Irans Quds Force, the lite wing of the Revolutionary Guard. As Suleimani arrived in Baghdad to meet local allies, McKenzie called in an M-9 Reaper drone to fire four Hellfire missiles at the Generals convoy. Suleimani and nine others were shredded. His severed hand was identified by the large red-stone ring often photographed on his wedding finger.

Five days later, Iran fired eleven ballistic missileseach carrying at least a thousand-pound warheadat Al Asad Airbase. U.S. intelligence had tracked Irans deployment of the missiles, giving the Americans a few hours to evacuate their warplanes and half of their personnel. Lieutenant Colonel Staci Coleman, the commander of an air expeditionary squad, had to decide which of her crew of a hundred and sixty should leave and who was emotionally equipped to stay. I was deciding who would live and who would die, she later told military investigators. I honestly thought anyone remaining behind would perish. Many of the service members leaving Al Asad anxiously hugged the ones staying. No American military personnel had been killed by an enemy air strike since 1953, during the Korean War.

The first salvo struck around 1A.M. Master Sergeant Janet Liliu recounted to investigators, What happened in the bunkers, well, no words can describe the atmosphere. I wasnt ready to die, but I tried to prepare myself with every announcement of an incoming missile. The bombardment dragged on for hours; it was the largest ballistic-missile attack ever by any nation on American troops. No Americans died, but a hundred and ten suffered traumatic brain injuries. Trump dismissed the suffering at Al Asad. I heard they had headaches, he told reporters. Two years later, many of those at Al Asad are still experiencing profound memory, vision, and hearing losses. One died by suicide in October. Eighty have been awarded Purple Hearts.

The lesson of Al Asad, McKenzie told me, is that Irans missiles have become a more immediate threat than its nuclear program. For decades, Irans rockets and missiles were wildly inaccurate. At Al Asad, they hit pretty much where they wanted to hit, McKenzie said. Now they can strike effectively across the breadth and depth of the Middle East. They could strike with accuracy, and they could strike with volume.

Irans advances have impressed both allies and enemies. After the 1979 revolution, the young theocracy purged the Shahs military and rebuilt it almost from scratch, despite waves of economic sanctions. Iran fought a ruinous eight-year war with Iraq in the nineteen-eighties that further depleted its armory. Its Air Force is still weak, its ships and tanks are mediocre, and its military is not capable of invading another country and holding territory.

Instead, the regime has concentrated on developing missiles with longer reach, precision accuracy, and greater destructive power. Iran is now one of the worlds top missile producers. Its arsenal is the largest and most diverse in the Middle East, the Defense Intelligence Agency reported. Iran has proven that it is using its ballistic-missile program as a means to coerce or intimidate its neighbors, Malley told me. Iran can fire more missiles than its adversariesincluding the United States and Israelcan shoot down or destroy. Tehran has achieved what McKenzie calls overmatcha level of capability in which a country has weaponry that makes it extremely difficult to check or defeat. Irans strategic capacity is now enormous, McKenzie said. Theyve got overmatch in the theatrethe ability to overwhelm.

Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a brigadier general and a former sniper who heads Irans Aerospace Force, is known for incendiary bravado. In 2019, he boasted, Everybody should know that all American bases and their vessels in a distance of up to two thousand kilometres are within the range of our missiles. We have constantly prepared ourselves for a full-fledged war. Hajizadeh succeeded General Hassan Moghaddam, who founded Irans missile and drone programs, and who died in 2011, with sixteen others, in a mysterious explosion. They had been working on a missile capable of hitting Israel.

Israelis call Hajizadeh the new Suleimani. McKenzie called him reckless. In 2019, Hajizadehs forces downed a U.S. reconnaissance drone over the Persian Gulf. He also orchestrated the missile strikes on Al Asad. Hours after that attack, his forces shot down a Ukrainian Boeing 737 passenger plane, with a hundred and seventy-six people on board, as it took off from Tehrans international airport. Everyone perished. For three days, Iran refused to accept blame until, under pressure, Hajizadeh went on television to admit it.

Iran now has the largest known underground complexes in the Middle East housing nuclear and missile programs. Most of the tunnels are in the west, facing Israel, or on the southern coast, across from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf sheikhdoms. This fall, satellite imagery tracked new underground construction near Bakhtaran, the most extensive complex. The tunnels, carved out of rock, descend more than sixteen hundred feet underground. Some complexes reportedly stretch for miles. Iran calls them missile cities.

In 2020, the Revolutionary Guard marked the anniversary of the U.S. Embassy takeover by releasing a video of Hajizadeh inspecting a subterranean missile arsenal. As suspenseful music plays in the background, he and two other Revolutionary Guard commanders march through a tunnel lined with rows of missiles stacked on top of one another. A recording of General Suleimani echoes in the background: You start this war, but we create the end ofit. An underground railroad ferries Emad missiles for rapid successive launches. Emads have a range of a thousand miles and can carry a conventional or a nuclear warhead.

Read more from the original source:
The Looming Threat of a Nuclear Crisis with Iran - The New Yorker

DUBAI, Dec 26 (Reuters) - Iran has banned the entry of travellers from Britain, France, Denmark and Norway for 15 days as part of curbs following the discovery of the highly transmissible Omicron variant of COVID-19 in the Middle East's worst-hit country.

State television said on Sunday a similar ban imposed in late November on travellers from South Africa and seven neighbouring countries was also extended for 15 days.

Health authorities also indefinitely halted land travel to neighbouring Turkey, a popular tourist destination, the broadcaster said.

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Iran, the pandemic's epicentre in the Middle East, has reported just 14 confirmed Omicron cases so far but media reports said detection kits were not widely available and officials have warned of a possible rapid spread within weeks.

The country has suffered 131,400 deaths in five waves of COVID-19 infections since February 2020.

Nearly 51.3 million of Iran's population of about 85 million have received two doses of coronavirus vaccine.

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Reporting by Dubai newsroom; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Iran bars travellers from parts of Western Europe over Omicron fears - Reuters

OPINION:

Operating on the nonsensical policy that anything former President Donald Trump did should be reversed, the Biden administration reengaged in indirect talks with Iran to return to the disastrous 2015 nuclear deal framework.

Sending the worst possible negotiator, Bob Malley, to Vienna, President Biden promised the American people the U.S. would return to the original agreement and get Iran to halt its ballistic missile program and end its support to terrorist operations in the Middle East. This effort has apparently failed, even as the U.S. was willing to concede to almost all of Irans demands.

Here, Iran has engaged in an extortion effort as a price for entering new talks, demanding the U.S. release of $10 billion of frozen Iranian funds to prove the seriousness of its intentions. In addition to $3.5 billion already released as a gesture of goodwill, Mr. Biden had already extended the waiver on sanctions on Iranian oil.

Iran has also demanded a guarantee the U.S. would not withdraw from any future agreement, which is absurd. Even Iran understands Mr. Biden cant commit to such a demand as a new nuclear deal is a political understanding and not a legally binding treaty approved by the Senate. Nobody from either party believes such an agreement could ever gain Senate approval. If another Republican takes office after Mr. Biden, Iran knows that the U.S. would likely withdraw again.

The new ultra-conservative Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has taken a hard line in the negotiations and has been unwilling to compromise on anything. If Mr. Raisi obtains anything less than his maximum demands, it will appear as capitulation, not compromise, and hurt his chance of becoming supreme leader, his highest priority.

Iran recognizes Mr. Biden is desperate for an agreement at almost any cost, which he can portray as a win. Fortunately, Mr. Bidens critics and even some mainstream media see this as well and arent willing to let him cave in on every issue entirely. Reflecting this reality, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was ominous when speaking about the negotiations saying, Its not going well and that, We do not yet have a pathway back into the JCPOA.

Some Democrats have recognized diplomacy was moving backward, as Irans representatives in Vienna made new demands while retracting previous concessions. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has even noted that the U.S. would not accept an approach where Iran stalls in the talks and advances its nuclear program. The Vienna negotiations just became a cover for Iranian progress toward a threshold nuclear weapons capability.

Unfortunately, the solution suggested by these Democrats is a fanciful delusion. They believe a diplomatic effort to resolve this crisis can be achieved by restoring Irans fear that its current nuclear path will trigger the use of force by the U.S.

Their recommendation that the U.S. military engages in exercises that instill fear into the Iranian leadership is not realistic. The Iranians and few in the U.S. believe Mr. Biden will ever use force against Iran or anyplace else. Here too, Mr. Bidens rhetoric that all options are on the table only rings hollow.

Saber rattling has not been limited to the U.S. Israel has been very public about reviving its planning efforts for war with Iran and potential airstrikes against the Iranian nuclear facilities. There is no realistic scenario for Israel undertaking such a strike or that it could be successful.

Israeli Chief of General Staff Aviv Kochavi sees the military option against Iran as an impractical scenario. Previously, the Israelis believed that the U.S. under Mr. Trump would do the work for them with pressure and crippling sanctions that would cause the regimes collapse. Clearly, this did not happen.

Israel has been focused on developing defensive plans for warning, detecting and intercepting Iranian drones. It could become a key player and asset for regional states under threat of these drones. In the future, these means of detection could also be deployed in the Gulf states, providing early warning of drone attacks a possible solution against the long-term threat of Iranian ballistic missiles.

Currently, Israel continues to engage in covert operations within Iran, targeting nuclear scientists and facilities with limited success in delaying the program. Recent cyberattacks on Iranian gas stations were less successful. Some have suggested that such covert operations be increased but fail to understand that such activities do not scale. The resources and personnel needed to greatly expand them dont exist and wont stop the Iranian program.

Iran uses its operatives and proxies to attack the U.S. and its allies, largely in Syria and Iraq. Most recently, two attacks were attributed to Iran and its Shiite militias the drone attack against the U.S. base in al-Tanf in eastern Syria and on the home of Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi. The U.S. has responded by striking Iranian weapons depots in Syria and Iranian drones but has not engaged Iranian forces directly.

For now, there is a tacit acceptance that there will be no new nuclear agreement. Iran may approach or cross the threshold in becoming a nuclear power, and that Plan B may well consist of effective defensive technologies. Added to this will need new and realistic thinking about how deterrence can be applied to this critical scenario. Without some realistic thinking, the Middle East may face a prospect nobody wants.

Abraham Wagner has served in several national security positions, including the NSC Staff under Presidents Nixon and Ford. He is the author of the recent book Henry Kissinger: Pragmatic Statesman in Hostile Times.

Read more:
Failure in the Iran nuclear talks - Washington Times