U.S. Won’t Negotiate Ukraine-Related Sanctions With Russia to Save Iran Nuclear Deal

With one of President Biden’s top foreign-policy goals imperiled, the U.S. official said Washington would start exploring alternatives to the deal over the next week if Russia didn’t back away from its demands for written guarantees exempting Russia from Ukraine-related sanctions that could curtail its future trade with Iran. Such guarantees could undercut the West’s punishing array of sanctions leveled at Russia over the Ukraine invasion.

“I don’t see the scope for going beyond what is within the confines of the JCPOA,” the U.S. official said, referring to the 2015 nuclear deal formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. “I think it’s pretty safe to say that there is no room for making exemptions beyond those.”

Meanwhile, Iran’s top paramilitary force took responsibility for a missile attack early Sunday on what it claimed were Israeli targets. It said the strike was in response to recent Israeli actions in the region, which included an airstrike last week in Syria that killed two of the group’s commanders

The Iranian attack is likely to create more regional resistance to American efforts to strike a new nuclear containment deal with Iran. The U.S. effort to resurrect the deal with Iran, which then-President Donald Trump withdrew from in 2018, has drawn criticism from Israeli and Persian Gulf leaders who worry that it will allow Tehran to continue to arm allies across the region and carry out its own missile strikes with impunity.

American, Iraqi and other world leaders condemned Sunday’s missile strike as a destabilizing act, as the Israeli military stepped up its defenses and U.S. officials considered how to respond. The French foreign ministry warned that the strike could imperil talks over the nuclear deal.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said U.S. officials are still seeking an agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear program despite the Iranian missile strike in Iraq.

“If Iran has a nuclear weapon, its ability to project power into the Middle East and to deter us, our allies, and partners, is enormous,” Ms. Sherman said on Fox News Sunday. “So President Biden believes very strongly, as does Secretary Blinken, as do I, that we need to make sure that Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon, and then we also need to deal with their malign behavior in the region.”

Time is pressing. U.S. and European officials say that Iran’s nuclear work has expanded close to a point that the deal’s main benefit to the West—keeping Iran months away from amassing enough nuclear fuel for a nuclear weapon—would be impossible. Iran is currently just a few weeks from that so-called breakout point.

The senior U.S. official said an agreement between Iran and the U.S. was “within reach,” saying only a few issues were holding up a deal when talks in Vienna were broken off Friday because of Russia’s demand. The official called Russia’s demands “the most serious stumbling block and obstacle to reaching a deal.”

There was no comment from Iran or Russia.

European officials say Russia had promised to respond with its precise demands for guarantees in the next few days. They have also started to explore among themselves options for pursuing a deal without Russia, two diplomats said.

“We would know within a week whether or not Russia is prepared to back down,” the U.S. official said.

Earlier this month, as Western diplomats were seeking to wrap up the talks, Russia requested guarantees that its work under the JCPOA would be exempted from Western sanctions over Ukraine. The U.S. had given sanctions waivers for the 2015 deal.

However after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters Moscow wanted much broader guarantees, its chief negotiator in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, presented a second paper to European negotiators on Tuesday seeking to protect all future trade and investment against Ukraine-related sanctions.