Tehran, Iran – Shortly before talks resume in Vienna around restoring Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal, its foreign ministry has made some changes which will well prove critical.
Hardline diplomat Ali Bagheri Kani has been appointed because the new deputy for politics , replacing veteran diplomat Abbas Araghchi, who led six rounds of nuclear talks in Vienna up to late July – when talks stopped to permit Iran’s new President Ebrahim Raisi to make his administration.
Araghchi, a career diplomat and senior member of the team that negotiated the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) during the tenure of President Hassan Rouhani, is now an adviser to secretary of state Hossein Amirabdollahian, which can mean he has not been fully sidelined
If the nuclear file stays with the foreign ministry – as against the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) – Bagheri Kani, for years a staunch opponent of the nuclear deal, could become the new chief nuclear negotiator.
But albeit he doesn’t lead the negotiations, he’s expected to play a big role in pushing for a stricter stance on the lifting of unilateral sanctions imposed by the us after it left the deal in 2018.
Bagheri Kani’s appointment was reportedly pushed for by Saeed Jalili, another opponent of the JCPOA and an ultraconservative senior member of the SNSC who ran for president within the June elections.
Jalili himself headed nuclear negotiations with the West – from 2007 to 2013 – but they led nowhere and therefore the UN Security Council continued to sanction Iran under then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. At the time, Jalili was also secretary of the SNSC and Bagheri Kani was his deputy.
The 54-year-old also led Jalili’s presidential campaign when he unsuccessfully ran against Rouhani in 2013.
Before being appointed the foreign ministry political deputy on Tuesday, Bagheri Kani was the top of the judiciary’s human rights council, an edge he was appointed to by then-Chief Justice Raisi.
Before that, he held several positions handling regional affairs at the foreign ministry, which he joined on the brink of 30 years ago.
Bagheri Kani hails from a family influential within the Islamic Republic’s quite 40-year history.
His 95-year-old father may be a former member of the clerical Assembly of Experts, which is tasked with appointing a successor to the 82-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His uncle led the assembly from 2010 until his death in 2014.
On Tuesday, the Iranian foreign ministry had another impactful appointment as Mehdi Safari was installed because the new deputy for economic diplomacy. Safari may be a former ambassador to China and Russia, another signal that Iran is increasingly turning towards the east.
The path ahead
The appointments come as Iran and therefore the US, China, Russia, and European powers are expected to return to the Vienna at a critical stage for the JCPOA.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman on Monday said the Vienna talks would happen “in the near future”.
Another crisis looming over the resumption of the talks was avoided on Sunday when Iran and therefore the global nuclear watchdog reached an agreement struck in Tehran.
The International nuclear energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran agreed the agency would have access to its monitoring equipment to exchange their memory cards and repair them. The recordings will still be kept in Tehran pending the lifting folks sanctions.
The agreement avoided the likelihood of a possible censure against Iran at the IAEA board of governors meeting. The US and European powers had pursued an identical resolution earlier this year, which prompted a short lived agreement between Iran and therefore the IAEA to avert a crisis.
Members of Iran’s hardline parliament, who made temporary agreements necessary once they passed a law in December restricting IAEA inspection access, are unhappy with Sunday’s deal, fearing it undermined their law. they need called Iran’s new nuclear chief, Mohammad Eslami, to brief them in Parliament.
On Tuesday, reports emerged that staff at Natanz had subjected female IAEA inspectors to unnecessarily intrusive searches in June this year. The agency called the incident “unacceptable” and said it raised the difficulty with Iran and there had been no further incidents.
Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility has been the target of two sabotage attacks within the past year, which Iran has blamed on Israel.
Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s IAEA envoy, said during a tweet on Tuesday that “security measures at the nuclear facilities in Iran are, reasonably, tightened”.