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An eighth round of talks on reviving the Iran nuclear deal has begun in Vienna, with Iran saying participants have been largely working from an acceptable common draft text and that its team was willing to stay as long as it takes to reach an agreement.

The Iranian foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said he wanted the focus of the coming round of talks to be on how Tehran could verify US sanctions had genuinely been lifted. The landmark 2015 deal, from which Donald Trump withdrew the US, had lifted sanctions on Iran in return for controls on its civilian nuclear programme.

We must reach a point where Iranian oil can be sold easily and without any restrictions so money for that oil can be transferred in foreign currency to Irans bank accounts, Amir-Abdollahian said.

He said the negotiators were working from two joint draft texts. The first broadly covers the nature of all the sanctions related to the nuclear deal that the US must lift and the second is on the staging and details of the steps Iran must reverse to come back into compliance with the deal, such as reducing its nuclear stockpile and ending the use of advanced centrifuges.

In terms of the third paper on the verification of the lifting of sanctions, Iran has spoken in terms of a fixed volume of oil and industrial exports that must be completed before it need take reciprocal action by returning fully to its compliance with its side of the deal.

Iran is concerned western companies will be reluctant to invest in Iran because of fears that a future Republican US president could reimpose sanctions in 2025, putting their investments in jeopardy, as happened in 2018 when Trump pulled out of the deal.

Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in a speech in February that sanctions had to be lifted in practice, not just on paper. Research from the Iranian parliament set out the number of barrels of oil to be exported a day and the required value of transactions taking place in Iranian controlled banks in Europe.

Although the talks will be difficult, Iran seemed intent on injecting some optimism into a process that began in April.

In an important announcement the day before the eighth round, Irans atomic energy authority gave a public pledge that it would not seek to enrich uranium above 60%, a promise that came as a relief to Russian negotiators concerned that if Tehran pushed ahead to nuclear weapons-grade 90% enrichment, the European and US delegations would abandon the talks.

Western diplomats have said they will not allow the talks to drag on much longer, possibly with early February as the final deadline. They point out the talks first started and were then paused for three months while a new Iranian government reviewed its negotiating position. Israel meanwhile claims Iran is procrastinating while its scientists take Iran secretly closer to a nuclear bomb. Western diplomats accept Iran is closer to breakout time than ever before, but this is not the same as being close to possessing a nuclear weapon.

Iran, China, Russia, France, Germany, the UK and the EU attended the talks, with a US delegation indirectly involved a cumbersome procedure upon which Tehran has insisted even though it has delayed progress. Iran has complained in recent weeks that the European countries, especially France, have taken a position that is indistinguishable from the US.

The degree to which Iran needs western sanctions to be lifted to be able to produce a viable budget is contested within the country. The leadership team around the new president, Ebrahim Raisi, claims it can avoid lifting costly subsidies on petrol and still produce a viable budget, a claim rejected by many Iranian economists.

Continued here:
Iran nuclear deal: eighth round of talks begins in Vienna ...

Progress has been made in Vienna, but both sides still need to make difficult decisions if an agreement is to be reached.

Tehran, Iran The eighth and possibly final round of talks in Vienna to restore Irans landmark 2015 nuclear deal with world powers has commenced on a cautiously hopeful note.

A Joint Commission meeting of the remaining participants of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the nuclear deal is formally known, concluded on Monday night in the Austrian capital, with a slew of bilateral and trilateral meetings between the different delegations.

There was, however, no direct meeting between Iranian and United States representatives as Tehran refuses to talk directly with Washington after the US in 2018 unilaterally abandoned the accord.

Following the main meeting at the Palais Coburg, Irans chief negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani said the delegations agreed that good progress was made during the seventh round that ended 10 days earlier, and there is now a suitable framework to take the talks forward.

The important thing in this Joint Commission meeting was that different sides emphasised on the importance of prioritising the lifting of sanctions, and also verification and guarantees during the eighth round, he said.

Bagheri said the negotiations will continue on Tuesday. The Iranian delegation has previously said it is ready to remain in Vienna until a deal acceptable to Tehran is reached.

Due to the US exit from the JCPOA under former President Donald Trump, Iran is now demanding the full lifting of the sanctions, guarantees the US will not leave again, and a period to verify sanctions are effectively lifted.

The JCPOA provided sanctions relief to Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme. But after the US withdrawal and imposition of sanctions, Iran abandoned those curbs and is now using advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium up to 60 percent.

Enrique Mora, the European Unions coordinator in the meeting, told reporters outside the venue that time is limited due to Irans nuclear advances, but all delegations wish to end the talks successfully.

We have come a long, long way since the beginning of the negotiation. We have incorporated sensitivities of a new Iranian government. So from the point of view of the coordinator, we are exactly at the point where we should be if we want to get the final successful result, he said, referring to the government of conservative President Ebrahim Raisi that came to power in August.

If we work hard in the days and weeks ahead, we should have a positive result. It is going to be very difficult. Difficult political decisions have to be taken both in Tehran and in Washington.

Russias chief negotiator Mikhail Ulyanov described the meeting as businesslike and result-oriented with the aim of achieving an agreement as soon as possible, and described the eighth round as presumably final round of the negotiations.

Earlier on Monday, Irans Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said the eighth round will move forward revolving around a new and acceptable joint document.

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Delegates at new round of Iran nuclear talks strike ...

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.

Original post:
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