TEHRAN- A member of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of the Iranian Parliament has said the new round of the Vienna talks, which started on Monday after a five-month break, must prove “fruitful” in lifting sanction on the Islamic Republic.
"The new message of this round of negotiations is that the talks must be fruitful and not as attritional and time consuming as before," Fada-Hossein Maleki said, IRNA reported on Monday.
Maleki added, "In this round of talks, an effort is being made so that the Iranian negotiating team to manage the atmosphere of the talks."
The MP went on to say that the Western media outlets have launched a disinformation campaign to portray Iran as a side which is not serious in the talks.
On the contrary, he said, it is the European and American sides which have never been serious and refused to fulfill their obligations.
The U.S. under former president Donald Trump quit the nuclear deal in May 2018 in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 and returned the previous sanction that had been lifted under the 2015 nuclear agreement and imposed new ones under different pretexts. The European signatories to the nuclear deal, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also failed to honor their obligation in normalizing economic and financial sanctions with Iran.
The MP from Zahedan also assessed the foreign policy strategy of the new Iranian administration in line that of the parliament.
Maleki reiterated Tehran’s position that the JCPOA is an agreement that has already been concluded and no negotiations are being held on it.
Iran has been insisting that the talks in Vienna must primarily focus on a verifiable lifting of sanctions.
"With regard to the JCPOA, only Iran fulfilled its obligations and none of the signatories fulfilled their obligations, and we witnessed that even some members of the deal did not condemn the U.S. action for withdrawing from this agreement."
Iran remained fully loyal to the JCPOA for a complete year after the U.S. quit the agreement. However, in May 2019 Iran started to gradually lift bans on its nuclear program as the European sides (France, Germany and Britain) failed to compensate Iran for the U.S. sanctions. At the time Iran announced if the Europeans honor their obligations under the agreement, it will reverse its decision.
‘Composition of negotiating team an advantage for Iran’
Iran has sent a 40-member strong team consisting of diplomats as well as experts in financial, monetary, banking, and legal affairs to the Vienna talks, something which Maleki said is an “advantage” for Iran.
To underscore Iran’s emphasis on lifting economic sanctions, the team includes deputy foreign ministers for economic and legal affairs, the deputy governor of the central bank and its former chief, the deputy economy and oil ministers and the economic adviser to Iran’s vice president.
The strategy is being adopted by the Supreme National Security Council and the chief negotiator had to use all the country's capacities so that the West does not have any excuses, MP Maleki said when asked about the composition of the Iranian team.
Maleki, a former diplomat, also said there should be an atmosphere of calm so that the negotiating team can ensure Iran's national interests based on its serious mission.
Mikhail Ulyanov, the Russian diplomat representing his country in the Vienna talks, in a tweet on Monday called the atmosphere both “heated” and amicable.
"Different. Different. Sometimes heated debates, sometimes very amicable discussion. But...the result is...the work will continue from where we left off on 20th June."
According to the New York Times, Enrique Mora of the European Union, who is chairing the talks, said that Iran “recognizes the work done in the past six rounds and the fact that we will be building on that.” But he said that Iran was “insisting on sanctions lifting” immediately.
Iran’s chief negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, the deputy foreign minister for political affairs, told reporters after the talks on Monday that Iran is insisting that the United States and its allies promise never to impose sanctions on Iran again.
An important step to keep the negotiations alive, Iran agreed to resume talks on Tuesday in one of three working groups established in earlier rounds — on which sanctions would eventually be lifted by the United States, the Times said.
The other two working groups, on the nuclear issue itself and on implementation and the sequencing of each country’s actions in the event of a new deal, will not resume talks Tuesday.
Mora said the nuclear working group would meet on Wednesday. “There is a sense of urgency” to restore the nuclear deal, he said, but “there is no fixed timeline in my mind.’’
In an opinion article in the Financial Times on November 28, Bagheri Kani said his view that the very term “nuclear negotiations” is itself “rife with error.”
Iran’s first goal, he wrote, is “to gain a full, guaranteed and verifiable removal of the sanctions that have been imposed on the Iranian people.” The talks, he said earlier this month, are “negotiations to remove unlawful and inhuman sanctions.”
TEHRAN — In response to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry statement about the Ukrainian plane crash incident, the Iranian Foreign Ministry released a statement on Tuesday clarifying on the latest developments surrounding the issue.
The statement said that following the accidental downing of the Ukrainian plane in January 2020, Iran, based on good faith and in efforts to clear up possible misunderstandings in bilateral relations, made every effort to interact appropriately with the Ukrainian government in a constructive and professional atmosphere on the various dimensions of the accident.
Following is an excerpt of the statement:
According to the data, in addition to several meetings and contacts at different levels between the relevant officials in the two countries, the delegations of the two sides met with the presence of representatives of all relevant departments in three rounds of bilateral talks, August 2020 in Kiev, October 2020 in Tehran and June 2021 in Kiev and in the form of technical, military, legal, criminal and payment negotiations in detail and in accordance with international obligations and even beyond.
The Iranian delegation, in good faith, informed the Ukrainian delegation of all its findings and provided a detailed description of the measures taken and tried to provide the necessary answers to the questions of the Ukrainian delegation within the framework of laws and regulations.
Despite the reluctance of the Ukrainian side to negotiate the harms to the families of the victims and the Ukrainian International Airlines (UIA), the foreign ministry announced in the second round of bilateral talks that necessary coordination is needed to begin as soon as possible. Negotiations have been held between the mentioned airlines and the government of Iran (on behalf of the Center for International Legal Affairs) and the first round of negotiations was held in 2021, and contacts between the parties continue in this regard.
Regarding the technical aspects of the accident, by reading the black boxes in Paris in accordance with the relevant international regulations and with the participation of the relevant governments, in accordance with Annex 13 of the Chicago Convention, the accident investigation team has completed the investigation and report process. The technical information of the accident was published in due time, after making the necessary coordination with the relevant governments, and was duly submitted to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). This issue was announced to the participating governments during the speech of the then Deputy Foreign Minister on June 2020, during the participation of the Iranian delegation in the ICAO Council meeting.
In the criminal and judicial fields, the Islamic Republic of Iran, taking into account all legal and criminal aspects and in accordance with its laws and regulations, has taken the necessary measures to conduct criminal investigations and investigations through the Tehran Military Prosecutor's Office against the defendants. The indictment was submitted to the court by the prosecutor. The first court hearing was held on November 21, 2021. The court hearings will be held in due time in accordance with the opinions of the esteemed judges and in compliance with all legal standards, and will continue until the result is achieved and justice is done.
On the other hand, the Islamic Republic of Iran, in good faith and on an ex-gratia basis and in order to appease the families of the victims, set a figure to be paid to the families of all victims (without any discrimination such as their nationality). It has taken action and with the formation of the payment headquarters in the Ministry of Transport and Urban Development, a large number of families have been paid so far and legal steps are being taken to pay the rest. In this regard, in addition to informing and paying Iranian citizens, in some notes, the governments of Ukraine, Canada, Afghanistan and Sweden, some of whose citizens are among the victims, have been informed and the Islamic Republic of Iran is ready to pay to families their loved ones have been declared dead.
As a result, as is clear from the above, the foreign ministry believes that all aspects of the Ukrainian plane crash in the form of three rounds of talks between the delegations of the two sides and other formal contacts between the two sides have been considered adequately. However, the Islamic Republic of Iran is always ready to continue bilateral interactions through the embassies of the two sides or other meetings and interactions between the officials of the two countries.
TEHRAN – Despite Western propaganda campaign in the run-up to Monday’s Vienna talks, Iran adopted a carefully crafted position during the talks amid muted hopes for a good, swift agreement.
Diplomats from Iran the P4+1 group of countries -China, Russia, France, and the UK plus Germany – gathered at the Palais Coburg hotel in Vienna amid global fanfare. It marked the resumption of the talks after a break of more than five months.
Ali Bagheri Kani, the deputy foreign minister of Iran, and Enrique Mora, EU deputy foreign policy chief, jointly chaired Monday’s plenary session.
Western media outlets purposefully depicted the overall situation in Vienna as somber, even before the negotiators reconvene the much-awaited meeting. They warned of Iranian “maximalist demands,” broached the idea of an interim agreement, and accused Iran of not being serious.
But the meeting debunked all these narratives. Iran’s seriousness became clear as soon as the Iranian negotiating team arrived in Vienna. It soon came to light that Iran has sent a 40-strong team comprised of seasoned experts from many sectors in the country’s economy, an indication that Iran was all-prepared to make a good deal even in the first round of talks, unlike the U.S. which, expecting unseriousness on the part of Iran, dispatched a small legal and political team.
During the meeting, Iran once again showed its seriousness. Contrary to the fears of the West, Iran presented what it has been publicly saying over the past weeks: a verifiable and effective lifting of all U.S. sanctions on Tehran, a guarantee that the U.S. won’t back down on its word again.
Addressing the meeting, Bagheri Kani stressed the need to lift all inhumane and coercive U.S. sanctions against the Iranian people, saying the lifting of sanctions must be the top priority in the talks.
While noting that the Islamic Republic has demonstrated its adherence to its obligations in practice, the head of the Iranian delegation stressed Tehran’s determination to reach a just understanding that serves the legitimate interests of Iran.
Prior to the meeting, Western diplomats expressed pessimism. But after the meeting, many diplomats came out with cautious optimism. “I feel extremely positive about what I have seen today,” Mora said after the meeting, noting that there is “clearly a will” by the Iranian side to revive a 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
The Russian envoy to the talks, Mikhail Ulyanov, described the resumption of Vienna talks as “quite successful.”
The lead Iranian negotiator also said that he was optimistic about the talks.
The optimism is a result of Iran’s balanced position in Vienna that set things straight and addressed the root cause of the current situation. Bagheri Kani spoke of claims by some Western parties about revival of the Iran nuclear deal, stressing that a revival of the JCPOA is nothing more than an exaggeration as long as the U.S. campaign of maximum pressure is alive.
The Iranian position led to a number of things that would help pave the way for more result-oriented talks. First, Iran made it clear that U.S. sanctions should be lifted at once, not in a phased-out way.
In remarks to Iran’s state TV, Bagheri Kani underlined this position, saying that sanctions must be removed all at once. This simply means that there would be no such thing as an interim agreement that is being raised by Western diplomatic circles. Because an interim agreement would require partial removal of the sanctions. And this would run counter to Iran’s core position of the need to lift all sanctions at once.
On Tuesday, the Qatari-owned Al Jazeera new television quoted an Iranian official as rejecting the idea of reaching an interim government with the negotiating partners in Vienna.
The unidentified official also said Iran has other options if negotiations fail, and the other parties know that. This brings us to another outcome of the talks.
Iran has shown its seriousness and willingness to reach a good deal. But would be extremely parochial not to have a plan B.
The principles and requirements of the new round of talks featured high in the Monday talks. The Iranian negotiating team sought to set out the principles and foundations of talks, and it did it successfully.
But what if the West violated these principles. Herein lies the importance of Iran’s plan B. So far, Iran has refrained from laying out its plan B but a senior Iranian lawmaker has said that Iran does have “other scenarios” if the West violates the principles set out during the negotiations. “If the West does not implement the principles of negotiation, including the implementation of agreement and mutual respect, and abuses again, Iran has other scenarios on the table,” the lawmaker, Mahmoud Abbas Zadeh Meshkini, the spokesman for the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said in remarks to Mehr News on Tuesday.
As long as its political opponents are labelled 'terrorists', Israel is absolved from the need to negotiate and gets a free pass from its allies to continue using naked military force
British Home SecretaryPriti Patelhas declared her intention to proscribe the whole ofHamas- the Islamic resistance movement that rules the Gaza Strip - as a terrorist organisation.
The military wing of the group was proscribed in the UK back in March 2001. Twenty years on, the home secretary proposes to extend this ban to the political wing by arguing that the distinction between the two wings is no longer tenable. The truth of the matter is that the distinction was tenable in 2001 and it is still tenable today. What is more, it is a crucial distinction.
Patel’s announcement came soon after Benny Gantz, Israel's defence minister, designated six Palestinian civil society NGO groups as terrorist organisations. This designation came close on the heels of the decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to launch a full-scale investigation of alleged war crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Priti Patel shares with Boris Johnson a Manichean view of the Middle East in which Israel represents the forces of light and Palestinian Hamas the forces of darkness
Gantz was the Israel Defense Forces' chief of staff during its assault on Gaza in July 2014, in which at least 2,256 Palestinians were killed, of whom 1,462 were civilians, including 551 children. This makes Gantz a prime suspect in the ICC’s war crimes probe. Hamas agreed to cooperate with the ICC investigation; Israel refused.
Some of the Palestinian organisations placed on Israel's terrorist list are cooperating with the ICC investigation. Although the evidence produced by Israel was judged inadequate by the European Union and the US government, the terrorism label achieved its goal of stigmatising the NGOs, curbing their ability to raise funds and disrupting their operations. The Israeli move was widely condemned as an attack on human rights. The British home secretary was not among the protesters.
Patel shares with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson a Manichean view of the Middle East struggle in which Israel represents the forces of light and Palestinian Hamas the forces of darkness. The reality is slightly more complicated.
Israeli ties with Conservatives
Reactions to Patel’s announcement were predictably polarised. A Hamas official said that it showed “absolute bias towards the Israeli occupation and is a submission to Israeli blackmail and dictations”. He accused the UK of supporting “the aggressors at the expense of the victims”. The Board of Deputies of British Jews warmly welcomed the move. In the Israeli media, the British decision was hailed as a triumph for Israeli diplomacy.
At a deeper level, the shift in British policy was a product of the close ties between Israel and the Conservative Party. Israel and its powerful lobby had been pressing the British government on this issue for some time. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett urged Boris Johnson to outlaw the whole of Hamas when he met with him last month at the UN climate conference in Glasgow.
Patel needed no prompting to do Israel's bidding. In 2017, as secretary of state for international development, she went on a freelance trip to Israel without informing then Prime Minister Theresa May or Boris Johnson, then foreign secretary. While pretending to be on a private holiday, Patel held a series of secret meetings with high-ranking Israeli officials, including the then prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Lord Polak, honorary president of the Conservative Friends of Israel, personally arranged 12 of these meetings.
Close contact with Israeli officials and lobbyists for Israel in the UK, as well as her own right-wing worldview, left Patel eager to swallow Israel’s narrative about Hamas. This narrative is utterly distorted and blatantly self-serving. Here, however, are some of the relevant facts.
Upon her return, Patel asked her officials to explore the possibility of diverting some of the foreign aid budget to enable the Israeli army to carry out humanitarian work in the occupied Golan Heights. She was forced to resign and she accepted her actions "fell below the high standards that are expected of a secretary of state".
Hamas emerged in 1988, at the beginning of the first Palestinian Intifada (uprising) against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Originally, it had the dual purpose of carrying out armed struggle against Israel and delivering social welfare programmes.
Its charter defined historic Palestine, including present-day Israel, as an exclusively Islamic land and ruled out any permanent peace with the Jewish state. In the 1990s, Hamas began to wage armed struggle against the occupation. Initially, this took the form of firing rockets from the Gaza Strip on Israeli towns and civilian centres. Hamas became associated with the suicide bombings it carried out inside Israel.
The term "suicide bombing" came to stand in the public eye as a particularly horrific form of warfare. Suicide bombings are in the end a means of delivering bombs to their target. Judged solely by lethal outcome, they are no more horrific than a one-tonne bomb dropped by an Israeli F-16 warplane on a residential apartment block in Gaza.
Regardless of the means of delivery, killing civilians is wrong. Period. In 2004, the political leadership of Hamas made a strategic decision to end suicide bombings.
Hamas and Fatah
Following Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in August 2005, Hamas began to engage in the internal Palestinian political process, running against the mainstream Fatah party which dominated the Palestinian Authority. From its seat in Ramallah, the PA ruled both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Fatah was widely perceived as corrupt and a sub-contractor for Israeli security in the occupied territories. Hamas, by contrast, had a reputation for probity in public life as well a record of real resistance to the Israeli occupation.
In January 2006, after winning an absolute majority in a fair election, Hamas formed a new government. Israel refused to recognise it. So did the US and EU. In theory, they favoured democracy, but when the people voted for the wrong bunch of politicians, Israel and its western allies resorted to severe diplomatic and economic sanctions to undermine them.
In March 2007, Hamas formed a national unity government with its arch-rival Fatah. This government proposed direct talks with Israel on a long-term ceasefire. Israel refused to negotiate, plotting instead to drive Hamas out of power and replace it with a collaborationist Fatah regime. Details of the plot are contained in “The Palestine Papers”, the cache of 1,600 diplomatic documents leaked to al Jazeera and the Guardian.
Hamas pre-empted this coup with a violent seizure of power in Gaza in June 2007, driving out the pro-Fatah forces. Israel reacted by imposing a blockade of the Gaza Strip, which is still in force today after 14 years. The blockade caused the collapse of the economy, high unemployment, acute shortages of water, food and medicines, and horrendous suffering of the overcrowded strip’s two million inhabitants. A blockade is a form of collective punishment which is proscribed by international law, yet the international community has failed to call Israel to account.
Since 2008 there have been four major Israeli assaults on Gaza, visiting death and destruction on the civilian population. There have also been several ceasefires brokered by Egypt between Israel and Hamas, each of which was honoured by Hamas and violated by Israel when it no longer suited its purposes.
Operation Cast Lead
In December 2008, Israeli army launched the first of these assaults, Operation Cast Lead. In the course of this operation, Israeli troops committed a series of war crimes that are documented in detail in the UN’s Goldstone Report. The Goldstone report also found Hamas guilty, but it reserved its harshest strictures for Israel.
Israel presented Operation Cast Lead as a defensive measure to protect its civilians against rockets fired from Gaza. But if this was the aim, all Israel needed to do was to follow Hamas’s example and observe the ceasefire. Hamas not only observed the ceasefire but acted to enforce it on the more radical groups operating in the Gaza Strip such as Islamic Jihad. In fact, much of the IDF’s lethal firepower was directed at civilian neighbourhoods.
A Palestinian boy stands in the rubble of his house in Jabalia in the Gaza Strip, destroyed during Israel's Operation Cast Lead, 10 April 2009 (AFP)
The report concluded that “what occurred in just over three weeks at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 was a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population … and to force upon it an ever-increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability”.
The claim that the operation was designed to “terrorise a civilian population” needs underlining. Terrorism is the use of force against civilians for political purposes. By this definition, Operation Cast Lead was an act of state terrorism. So were the subsequent Israeli attacks on Gaza in 2012, 2014 and 2021.
Terrorism is the use of force against civilians for political purposes. By this definition, Israel's Operation Cast Lead was an act of state terrorism
In 2017, Hamas issued a policy document that softened its previous policy positions on Israel and used more measured language about the Jewish people. It stopped short of official recognition of Israel, but formally accepted a Palestinian state on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank with a capital city in East Jerusalem.
In other words, it accepted a Palestinian state alongside Israel rather than instead of Israel. The document also stressed that Hamas’s struggle is not with Jews but with the “occupying Zionist aggressors”.
So why did the British government choose this moment to outlaw the political wing of Hamas, having criminalised its military wing 20 years ago? Part of the answer is that this was done in response to pressure from the Israel lobby. The state of Israel has the right and indeed the duty to protect its civilians from Palestinian attacks. The simplest and surest way of protecting its citizens is via long-term ceasefire agreements with the political leadership of Hamas.
By labelling its political opponents as terrorists, Israel absolves itself from the need to talk to them and gets a free pass from its western allies to resort to the modus operandi to which it is addicted - naked military force. The people who pay the price are civilians on both sides, and especially the defenceless inhabitants of Gaza, the biggest open-air prison in the world.
Series of UK betrayals
True friends do not indulge their friends’ addiction but try to wean them from it. Boris Johnson could hardly be more indulgent. His partisanship extends to resisting all international attempts to call Israel to account for its acts of aggression and unlawful behaviour. He is opposed, for example, to the International Criminal Court investigation into alleged war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories.
In a letter to the Conservative Friends of Israel, he said that while his government had respect for the independence of the court, it opposed this particular inquiry. “This investigation gives the impression of being a partial and prejudicial attack on a friend and ally of the UK’s,” he wrote. The perverse logic of the statement is that being a friend and ally of the UK places Israel above international law.
One final question: why was the latest anti-Palestinian policy shift announced by the home secretary rather than the foreign secretary? Patel claims that designating the whole of Hamas as a terrorist organisation should be seen through a domestic prism: it will help to protect Jews in this country. This is preposterous: Hamas exercises its right under international law to resist the Israeli occupation, the most prolonged and brutal military occupation of modern times. Fearmongering and criminalising the political wing of Hamas will not make British Jews any safer.
The Balfour Declaration: Britain's fatal mistake in Palestine
In May, in a massively disproportionate use of force, Israel carried out an aerial bombardment of Gaza that resulted in the death of 256 Palestinians, including 66 children. The Community Security Trust, a charity concerned with the safety and security of Jews in the UK, recorded a “horrific surge” in racist attacks during that month which “surpassed anything we have seen before”.
If the British government genuinely wanted to make Jews in this country feel safer, it should stop blaming the Palestinian victims for their own misfortune. It should urge its Israeli ally to respect international humanitarian law, to observe ceasefire agreements, to exercise restraint in the use of military force and to talk to the political leadership of Hamas.
Patel’s latest move only serves to expose the utter bankruptcy of the Conservative government’s policy towards Israel-Palestine. The government claims to support a two-state solution to the conflict. Yet despite repeated parliamentary votes in favour of recognising Palestine, the government refuses to budge.
When he was foreign secretary, Boris Johnson told the House of Commons that the Conservative government would recognise Palestine when the time was right. But for the government he now heads, the time will never be right. Timing is just an excuse to procrastinate while continuing to appease Israel.
To be sure, British recognition of Palestine would not redress the huge asymmetry of power between the two parties, but it would give the Palestinians parity of esteem. This is the least that Britain can do for the Palestinians today, given its long series of betrayals stretching back to the Balfour Declaration over a century ago.
In his 2014 book The Churchill Factor, Johnson wrote that the Balfour Declaration was “bizarre”, "a tragically incoherent document" and "an exquisite piece of FO fudgerama".
Today, from his position of power, Johnson has a unique opportunity to rectify an egregious historical wrong. Criminalising Hamas may please Israel and the right-wing of his party, but it will only further blacken Britain’s already dark record as the betrayer of the Palestinian people.
Avi Shlaim
Avi Shlaim is an Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Oxford University and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2014) and Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations (2009).
TEHRAN — A senior Iranian MP has said certain provocative acts by the West, such as creating unrest in the country or making borders insecure, will not affect Tehran’s position in the Vienna talks.
“These measures will have no effect on the talks,” Mahmoud Abbaszadeh Meshkini, spokesman for the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, told Mehr on Tuesday.
Meshkini also said, “The Islamic Republic does not negotiate in Vienna. It only asks questions and the P5+1 must answer.”
The talks for lifting sanctions on Iran were resumed on Monday after a five-month break. The talks are chaired by Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani and Enrique Mora, the European Union political director.
The parliamentary committee spokesman added if the West wants to settle the sanctions issue with Iran, it must first clarify its position toward the JCPOA, the official name for the 2015 nuclear deal.
The European countries easily allowed Donald Trump to leave the JCPOA, and not only did they not lift the sanctions, but they also increased the sanctions.
Pointing to the cruelty of sanctions on Iran amid the deadly Coronavirus pandemic, the MP also said, “According to international law, civilians are safe from attack in war, but the Iranian people were not safe from attack in the economic war. The United States and the West did not allow Iran to import vaccines and drugs.”
He concluded by saying that if the West does not observe the principles of negotiations, including the implementation of agreement and mutual respect or invent pretexts again, Iran has other options on the table.
“We will force the West and the United States to accept the Iranian nation as a global superpower. Some major Asian countries have accepted this reality today,” he concluded.
TEHRAN (FNA)- The Iranian delegation participating in the Vienna talks underlined that the removal of all sanctions is a prerequisite for Washington to return to the nuclear deal, adding that Iran is not in an emergency situation to accept any agreement.
The opening session of talks between Iran and the Group 4+1 (Russia, China, Britain and France plus Germany) on lifting sanctions was held in a “constructive, professional and straight” atmosphere.
All parties acknowledged Iran's right to insist on the lifting of sanctions, and it was decided that the meeting of the working group on removal of sanctions would start discussions.
The Iranian delegation stressed that until a decision on the sanctions, it will not be possible to decide on other issues.
It was emphasized that as long as the sanctions red list is in place, the green light for the US return to the agreement will not be turned on.
Sources in the talks said Russia and China fully supported the positions of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Regarding the documents resulted from the previous 6 rounds of negotiations, the representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran stressed that these documents are only a draft and although Iran does not stand in rejection of all of them, the draft is basically changeable and negotiable; therefore the delegation of the Islamic Republic Iran intends to submit its views and proposals on previous texts and put new drafts on the table too.
It was emphasized that until everything is agreed, nothing will be agreed upon.
The former US president discarded a complete and final agreement. The current president is expected to be at least as bold as his predecessor in accepting the country's undertakings.
It was emphasized that only the complete removal of sanctions and end of maximum pressure with all its means can lead to the US return to the agreement.
It was stressed that the negotiations should determine the fate of the sanctions removal in a "sufficient, accurate and clear" way and that Iran will continue its compensatory measures until the removal of sanctions.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has always carefully and obsessively demonstrated adherence to its undertakings in practice, and is now fully prepared and determined to reach a "fair agreement that guarantees the legitimate rights of the Iranian people". But if the US wants to play a sanctions game with Iran, the Islamic Republic of Iran will respond appropriately to this game.
It was noted that throughout the years of oppressive sanctions, the Islamic Republic of Iran has learned how to confront the sanctions and does not see itself in a time urgency to reach an agreement.
Iran’s top negotiator Ali Baqeri Kani, who is also the deputy foreign minister, told reporters in Vienna on Monday that after the first round all participants agreed to focus on lifting sanctions against Tehran.
Baqeri Kani said that he was optimistic after the first meetings, adding that all parties agreed that focus of the talks should be lifting of sanctions imposed on Iran after the US unilateral withdrawal from the landmark 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
He added that the participants also agreed that a special working group should start its work on Tuesday to discuss "the removal of illegal and brutal sanctions" imposed on the Iranian nation.
"I believe that this is a great achievement that all member states of the G4+1 group accepted Iran's rightful request and emphasized that the state of the US regime's illegal sanctions against our people must be clarified first and then other issues be discussed," Baqeri Kani said.
He added that guarantees should be given to Tehran that no new sanctions would be imposed on the country.
“During the meeting, we emphasized that the main factor behind the current conditions is actions taken by a country, which left the agreement in violation of the accord and the United Nations Security Council resolution [that upheld it], and also reinstated past sanctions [on Iran] in contravention of international laws and regulations while imposing new sanctions as well,” Baqeri Kani said.
The US unilaterally abandoned the multilateral nuclear deal in 2018 despite Iran’s full compliance with its nuclear undertakings, as repeatedly certified by the UN nuclear agency. The US then unleashed a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, which practically deprived the country of all of the deal’s economic benefits.
Envoys from Iran and the remaining signatories to the JCPOA – Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China – ended the first meeting of the seventh round of discussions in Vienna on Monday. The negotiations were paused in June, when Iran held its presidential election. Since then, the new Iranian administration has been reviewing the details of the six rounds of discussions held under the previous administration.
Iran has already clarified that the talks will not focus on nuclear issues, noting that those issues were already been resolved through negotiations, which led to the conclusion of the JCPOA.
Iran says it will not settle for anything less than removal of all US sanctions at once and in a verifiable manner. Tehran has also called on the other parties to make the most of the occasion, warning that the window of opportunity will not remain open indefinitely.
British intelligence and tech sectors have much to learn from Israeli expertise despite rights concerns, experts say
Britain's Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid after signing a memorandum of understanding at Britain's Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office in London on Monday (Reuters)
Israel will officially become a “tier-one cyber partner for the UK”, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and British Foreign Minister Liz Truss said on Monday in anewspaper articleannouncing a new trade and defence deal between the countries.
However, experts say cyber security efforts between the two countries - largely intelligence and knowledge sharing - have run deep for years: back in 2018, British officials were already describing Israel as “a first order partner” on cyber security.
Even then, according to a research paper from the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (Bicom) lobby group, several major British banks and other financial institutions were protected by Israeli cyber security companies and technologies.
Israel, it seems, is looking to lead international efforts with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennettdeclaring in Julythat the country was establishing “a global cyber defence shield” of countries working together on cyber security and had already signed up a dozen nations.
So what is new now? For one, it comes as the UK has faced as many ransomware attacks in the first quarter of this year than it had in all of 2020 which itself had three times the number of attacks of 2019, according to the National Cyber Security Centre’s annual review.
But the UK-Israeli agreement has also been made just months after allegations emerged that around 400 British citizens and residents were targeted with Pegasus spyware from the Israeli-based firm NSO Group, including two members of the House of Lords.
That was one of three cases that have emerged since July of Israeli spyware allegedly targeting UK citizens and entities. Cybersecurity experts have said the other two - including an attack on the London-based Middle East Eye - involved systems either made by or "strongly linked" to Candiru, another Israeli firm. A Candiru executive told MEE the company's products are meant to fight terror and crime, not to hack websites.
The deal also comes weeks after it emerged that the Israeli military has been surveilling Palestinians in the occupied West Bank with facial recognition technology and that Palestinians working for six aid agencies critical of Israel had been targeted with Pegasus spyware, many believe by the Israeli government.
A former minister told Middle East Eye that he thought the cyber security cooperation between the two countries was useful, but objected to the lack of acknowledgement by the British government of the “maltreatment and persecution of the Palestinians by the Israeli Defence Force and government”.
'Given Israel’s record, it is extremely dangerous for the UK to be embracing its high-tech sector'
- Chris Doyle, Council for Arab-British Understanding
“There are security threats in the region so if it is shared with the right motives, that’s good. I just don’t like the fact that it’s Palestine that gets ignored and suffers. Everything else is fine. Israel is a country. That’s good. All of that’s fine. But I object to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians basically.”
Others like Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, said the deal showed the British government had “sold out on human rights”.
“Given Israel’s record, it is extremely dangerous for the UK to be embracing its high-tech sector,” Doyle told Middle East Eye after the deal was announced.
“How can the Israeli authorities be trusted when it permitted one of its leading companies, NSO, to sell its Pegasus surveillance software to brutal regimes? That very software was used against British citizens as well as human rights defenders.”
MEE asked the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office whether the terms of the trade deal explicitly prohibit Israeli spyware from being used against targets in the UK, but did not receive an answer.
'The biggest secret sauce'
There were few details revealed on Monday about what the new agreement means tangibly for cyber security activities between Israel and the UK, which isn’t surprising given that what was signed was a framework for future cooperation.
Historically, Yossi Melman, an Israeli journalist, told MEE, the UK has been at the forefront of technological development for military and intelligence, and already has a well-developed cybersecurity programme.
But Israel, he said, would bring to the table more experience with offensive cyber attacks used, for example, in its cyberwar with Iran. “The UK would, as part of preparing itself for a future conflict, want to gather from the learning of the Israeli experience,” Melman said.
Candiru: UK government won't say whether it will complain to Israel over spyware attacks
There are some clues about the direction of travel in a speech the UK’s top cyber security official Lindy Cameron told an audience this July at CyberWeek at Tel Aviv University.
“The UK-Israel cyber security relationship is built on the long-standing ties of an enduring national security alliance. Operational collaboration between our agencies - and many other agencies represented at this conference - is strong and well developed,” Cameron said.
“It focuses on exchanges of threat reporting and analysis of trends, something I am pleased to say continued successfully throughout the challenge of Covid.”
Specifically, Cameron highlighted several ways Israel had been able to cross-pollinate between its military, intelligence community and private sector to develop its cyber capabilities.
She said Israel’s Cyber Innovation Arena in Be’er Shiva - known as CyberSpark - has served as one of the inspirations for Cyber Central, a nearly square-mile-large business park housing cyber-related companies, now being built on the outskirts of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, where GCHQ, the British intelligence and security centre is based.
Cyber Central, Cameron said, will be “a hive of industry collaboration, ranging from tech giants to start-ups as well as academia and government”. It is also the anchor of the broader Golden Valley Development that developers say will bring around 12,000 jobs to Gloucestershire.
She also said that the UK had drawn inspiration from Talpiot, an elite, nine-year-long Israeli military training programme in technology that has also produced many of the country’s tech entrepreneurs and their innovations.
Richard Moore, former MI6 chief (Twitter)
Building synergies between intelligence and technology industry is clearly an area of interest to the UK with the MI6 chief Richard Moore saying in his first public speech on Tuesday that intelligence agencies can’t work alone, given the speed at which technology is developing.
“Unlike Q in the Bond movies, we cannot do it all in-house,” Moore said. “Our adversaries are pouring money and ambition into mastering artificial intelligence, quantum computing and synthetic biology, because they know that mastering these technologies will give them leverage. An intelligence service needs to be at the vanguard of what is technologically possible.”
Bennett, himself a former elite commando turned tech entrepreneur, has made similar comments, describing this coming together for which his country is well-known as “the biggest secret sauce of Israel”.
“The biggest thing we did is create an industry - or allow an industry to thrive. No country alone, no government or combination of governments can solve this problem,” he said at the same Tel Aviv University cyber gathering in July. “We need the prowess of the private industry.”
Checks and balances
Of course, it’s private Israeli spyware companies that have been making headlines for allegedly enabling repressive governments to target and surveil human rights defenders, dissidents, journalists and heads of state. So should the UK be worried about going down this road?
Emily Taylor, CEO of Oxford Information Labs and an associate fellow in Chatham House’s International Security programme, said activities in this field often come with inherent human rights risks and require checks and balances - and mechanisms which ensure they are being observed.
“The UK, I think, has a great respect for its intelligence agencies,” Taylor said. “But part and parcel of maintaining that trust is also in making sure that there isn’t too much of a deferential attitude from say the parliamentary committees or the oversight mechanisms that are meant to look into their work.”
Compared to the US government that blacklisted the NSO Group and Candiru, the British government has been muted in its response to the allegations about the 400 British citizens who may have been targeted by Pegasus spyware.
'We’ve got to try to challenge ourselves to get out of binary thinking like "One Nation, Bad. One Nation, Good"'
- Emily Taylor, Oxford Information Labs and Chatham House
After the Pegasus stories were published, a British minister told members of the House of Lords that the government had raised its concerns about the NSO Group's operations "several times" with Israel, but has not answered further questions about what sparked the complaints or when they were made.
A source close to NSO Group told the Guardian in October that Pegasus could no longer target UK numbers, a change reportedly implemented in 2020 after it realised the spyware had been used to hack the mobile phones of Princess Haya and her lawyer, Fiona Shackleton, who is also a member of the House of Lords.
But questions still remain. Amnesty, which was one of the partners in the Pegasus papers, urged the UK’s Foreign Affairs committee last month to conduct an immediate investigation into the allegations, saying not enough had been done.
Could it be, MEE asked Taylor, given the UK’s established ties to Israel on cyber security, that the British government had calculated that it was better to handle the Pegasus allegations privately?
Taylor said that was possible, but also said it was important that incidents like the alleged Pegasus targeting "are not just papered over".
“It’s about trying to develop the ability to have proper checks and balances, the ability to assess after the event, how certain tools were used by different partners," she said.
“We’ve got to try to challenge ourselves to get out of binary thinking like ‘One Nation, Bad. One Nation, Good’….Or ‘This is a good thing, so it can’t be bad in any way’. Everything is imperfect and everything in it has its failings that need to be honestly addressed."
