TEHRAN - Europe’s proposal to resuscitate Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers would blunt American sanctions against Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and pave the way for Tehran to avoid further scrutiny of its atomic sites, according to excerpts of a draft of the text reviewed by Politico.

The details of the draft were finalized in Vienna on Monday after 16 months of talks. As the EU worked on it in close co-ordination with Washington, the terms suggest that the Biden administration is prepared to make greater concessions than expected to secure a deal — especially by reducing pressure on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a powerful military organization with near-ubiquitous political and economic influence.

Biden has made trying to revive the 2015 nuclear deal a foreign policy priority. Under the original accord, which President Donald Trump withdrew from in 2018, Iran faced relief from international sanctions in return for agreeing to strict limits on its nuclear activities. Since the U.S. withdrawal, Iran’s nuclear activities have accelerated and a senior advisor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has boasted that the country now has the technical ability to build a bomb, even if that is not Tehran’s strategic goal.

In April, Biden dismissed an Iranian demand that he reverse a 2019 decision by the Trump administration to place the IRGC on the U.S.’ list of “Foreign Terrorist Organizations.” A bipartisan group of U.S. senators followed in early May with a resolution declaring that the U.S. should not agree to any deal to lift sanctions.

While the European proposal, brokered by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell in close coordination with U.S. officials, would not lift the IRGC sanctions per se, it would severely limit their effectiveness.

Under the proposed text, Europeans and other non-Americans could conduct business with Iranian entities engaged in “transactions” with the IRGC without fear of triggering U.S. sanctions, as is currently the case, provided their primary business partner was not on a U.S. sanctions registry.

“Non-U.S. persons doing business with Iranian persons that are not on the [U.S. sanctions list] will not be exposed to sanctions merely as a result of those Iranian persons engaging in separate transactions involving Iranian persons on the [U.S. sanctions list] (including Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), its officials, or its subsidiaries or affiliates),” the proposal reads.

This wording would allow the Europeans to do business very widely across Iran, where commercial interaction with the IRGC is almost inevitable, particularly in terms of trade. One diplomat following the dossier noted the wording also suggests that IRGC entities could seek to evade U.S. sanctions simply by conducting their business via surrogates and shell companies that create a degree of separation, rendering the U.S. restrictions toothless for non-American enterprises and individuals.

An EU spokesman declined to comment on the substance of the proposal.

“We are not negotiating in public and will not comment on purported leaks from the press,” a U.S. senior administration official told Politico. “We are carefully studying the EU’s proposed final text and will provide our answer to them as asked. You have seen how the EU has described this text as their final effort at a compromise — nobody should be surprised that it requires difficult decisions for all participants.”

Europe’s lenient approach

Europe, which regards Iran as an attractive market and source of energy, has been more malleable in its approach to Tehran. The EU and UK have steadfastly backed the nuclear deal. In July, for example, the Belgian parliament approved a prisoner swap treaty with Iran.

Europe’s allegiance to the deal is both commercial and personal. Senior European diplomats spent years crafting the original Iran accord and officials across the Continent still regard it as the signature achievement of European diplomacy in recent decades.

In addition to lifting the pressure on the IRGC, the European proposal would also open the door for Tehran to quickly resolve a separate standoff with the UN’s nuclear watchdog, which has monitored Iran’s nuclear program, over claims of undisclosed atomic sites.

Tehran has demanded the International Atomic Energy Agency’s probes be concluded as a condition to reactivating the nuclear deal. Both the U.S. and Europeans refused, however, insisting the UN probe was a separate matter outside the scope of the nuclear deal.

Yet now, the same European countries that censured Iran in June have proposed a further concession by linking the resolution of the IAEA probes to the resumption of the nuclear accord. The proposed text states that the U.S. and Europeans “take note of Iran’s intent” to address the outstanding issues by “re-implementation day,” that is the date when the accord would go back into effect, expected to be a few months after the formal signing.

The U.S. senior administration official pushed back on that narrative, noting that, “Safeguards on nuclear material go to the core of the IAEA’s mandate. The safeguards investigations are not political — they are not leverage or bargaining chips. Once the IAEA director general reports to the Board of Governors that the outstanding issues have been clarified and resolved, we expect them to come off the Board’s agenda. Not before.”

Despite the concessions in the EU draft, Iran has yet to accept it, saying this week that it was still reviewing the proposal. The other parties to the original agreement, known as the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,” include the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council as well as Germany and the EU. Yet the real negotiation has been between the U.S. and Iran, with the Europeans acting as a go-between after Tehran refused direct talks.

After months of what appeared to be largely fruitless negotiations, the EU’s Borrell presented what he said was the “final text” on Monday.

“What can be negotiated has been negotiated,” he tweeted. “However, behind every technical issue and every paragraph lies a political decision that needs to be taken in the capitals. If these answers are positive, then we can sign this deal.”