Geneva: US Secretary of State John Kerry and fellow big power foreign ministers headed to Geneva on Friday to help clinch an interim nuclear deal with Iran and ease a decade-old standoff, with Israel warning they were making an epic mistake.
Diplomats said a breakthrough at this week’s negotiations remained uncertain and would in any case mark only the first step in a long, complex process towards a permanent resolution of Iran’s dispute with the West over its nuclear ambitions.
But they said the imminent arrival of Kerry, British Foreign Secretary William Hague and French and German foreign ministers Laurent Fabius and Guido Westerwelle hinted that the five permanent UN Security Council members and Germany may be closer to an agreement with Iran than ever before.
A senior US State Department official said Kerry was committed to doing “anything he can” to narrow differences with the Islamic Republic. The powers aim to cap Iran’s nuclear work to prevent any advance towards a nuclear weapons capability.
“This is a complex process,” the official said in Tel Aviv where Kerry met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who sees Iran’s atomic aspirations as a menace to the Jewish state.
The official said Kerry had decided to break off a Middle East visit to go to Geneva at the invitation of Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign policy chief who is coordinating the talks with Iran and the six powers.
Netanyahu warned Kerry and European counterparts that Iran would be getting “the deal of the century” if they carried out proposals to grant Tehran limited, temporary relief from sanctions in exchange for a partial suspension of, and pledge not to expand, its enrichment of uranium for nuclear fuel.
“Israel utterly rejects it and what I am saying is shared by many in the region, whether or not they express that publicly,” Netanyahu told reporters.
“Israel is not obliged by this agreement and Israel will do everything it needs to do to defend itself and the security of its people,” he said before meeting Kerry in Jerusalem.
Israel has repeatedly suggested that it might strike Iran if it did not shelve its entire nuclear programme and warned against allowing it to maintain what Israel sees as a nascent atomic bomb capability. Iran says its nuclear activities are geared only to civilian needs and has refused to suspend them.
The fact that an accord may finally be feasible after a decade of rhetorical feuding and hostility rather than genuine negotiations between Iran and the West highlighted a striking shift in Tehran’s foreign policy since the election in June of a relative moderate, Hassan Rouhani, as Iranian president.
ISRAELI FURY
The negotiations in Geneva involve Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain - plus Germany. While Iran has in the past suggested expanding the talks to include issues like Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria, the six powers have insisted on keeping them focused on Tehran’s nuclear work.
The Islamic Republic, which holds some of the world’s largest oil and gas reserves, wants the six powers to lift increasingly tough restrictions that have slashed its daily crude sales revenue by 60 per cent in the last two years.
Iran and the powers are discussing a partial suspension deal covering around half a year. If a preliminary deal is nailed down, it would only be the first stage in a process involving many rounds of intricate negotiations in the next few months aimed at securing a permanent agreement.
One of the main ideas under consideration is the disbursement in instalments of up to around $50 billion of Iranian funds frozen in foreign accounts for many years. Other ideas included temporarily relaxing restrictions on Iran’s trade in petrochemicals and precious metals.
Both sides have limited room to manoeuvre, as hardliners in Tehran and in Washington could sharply criticise any agreement they believed went too far in offering concessions.
One Western diplomat told Reuters that Israel’s fury at the proposed deal might actually make it easier for Rouhani to sell the interim deal to sceptics in Iran’s powerful security and clerical elites who are wary of U.S. overtures to Tehran 33 years after Washington broke off diplomatic relations.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said there had been positive changes in the negotiating positions and that all sides were aiming at a “concrete result” in Geneva.
“There is a chance that a common, unified approach will be agreed, including a ‘road map’ on finally ending this problem,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Moscow.
Ashton’s spokesman Michael Mann told reporters that “very intense work is continuing.” France’s Laurent Fabius, the first of the Western foreign ministers to arrive in Geneva, said the talks were difficult.
“There is progress, but nothing is concluded yet,” he said.
Tehran wants respite from a panoply of international sanctions choking its economy. The United States has said world powers will consider some sanctions relief, while leaving the complex web of US, EU and U.N. restrictions in place, if Iran takes verifiable steps to rein in its nuclear programme.
Israel has argued against sanctions relief until Iran has/stotally dismantled enrichment. “The Iranians are walking around very satisfied in Geneva - as well they should be, because they got everything and paid nothing,” Netanyahu said.
PHASED SANCTIONS RELIEF?
US President Barack Obama said on Thursday that the world could slightly ease up on sanctions against Iran in the early stages of negotiating a comprehensive deal.
“There is the possibility of a phased agreement in which the first phase would be us ... halting any advances on their nuclear programme ... and putting in place a way where we can provide them some very modest relief, but keeping the sanctions architecture in place,” he said in an interview with NBC News.
Kerry said that Tehran would need to prove its atomic activities were peaceful, and that Washington would not make a “bad deal, that leaves any of our friends or ourselves exposed to a nuclear weapons programme”.
“We’re asking them to step up and provide a complete freeze over where they are today,” he said on Thursday.
In Geneva, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi was cautious on the chances of an accord. “Too soon to say,” he told reporters on Thursday after the first day of talks. “I’m a bit optimistic. We are still working. We are in a very sensitive phase. We are engaged in real negotiations.” Lending urgency to the need for a breakthrough was a threat by the US Congress to pursue tough new sanctions on Iran.
Obama has been urging Congress to hold off on more punitive steps to isolate Iran, demanded by Israel, to avoid undermining the fragile diplomatic opening with the Islamic Republic.
But many US lawmakers, including several of Obama’s fellow Democrats, believe tough sanctions brought Iran to the negotiating table in the first place and that more are needed to discourage it from diverting enrichment toward bombmaking.
Iran’s foreign minister and chief negotiator, Mohammad Javad Zarif, suggested a partial suspension of Iran’s contested uranium enrichment campaign might be possible - a concession Tehran had ruled out before Rouhani’s landslide election.
Zarif said he hoped the sides would agree on a joint statement on Friday stipulating a goal to be reached “within a limited period of time, hopefully in less than a year”, and a series of reciprocal actions they would take “to build confidence and address their most immediate concerns”.
Iran and the United States have had no diplomatic ties since soon after the 1979 Islamic Revolution that overthrew the US-backed monarchy, and their mutual mistrust and enmity have posed the biggest obstacle to any historic nuclear settlement.
