Senate puts off Iran sanctions vote as nuclear talks in Geneva start
Senate puts off Iran sanctions vote as nuclear talks in Geneva start – UPI.com.
GENEVA, Switzerland, Nov. 20 (UPI) — The U.S. Senate will put off a vote on new Iranian sanctions that could derail nuclear talks, senators said, as a crucial round of talks was to begin Wednesday.
“It makes sense not to add new sanctions while negotiations are going on,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was quoted by The New York Times as saying after he and nine other top Democratic and Republican leaders of Senate foreign policy and national security committees met with President Obama at the White House.
At the same time, the senators urged Obama to reject any nuclear deal with Iran that did not include a tangible rollback of its nuclear weapons program, the senators told reporters.
The talks in Geneva, billed as picking up where failed talks in the Swiss city left off 10 days ago, are to pursue what officials call a “first-step,” six-month agreement in which Iran freezes its nuclear program in return for a moderate letup of economic sanctions.
The proposed interim deal has met fierce opposition from Israel and Persian Gulf allies, as well as from Republicans and some Democrats in Congress.
Under the proposed deal, during the six months, the United States, Britain, France, Germany Russia and Germany — known as the P5-plus-1 because they’re the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany — would try to work out a comprehensive agreement that would end a 10-year impasse over Iran’s disputed nuclear program.
The United States, Israel and other allies maintain Iran is covertly trying to develop a capacity to build nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies, insisting its nuclear ambitions are limited to the peaceful generation of electricity and other civilian uses.
“I don’t know if we’ll be able to close a deal this week or next week,” Obama told a business leaders forum in Washington after meeting with the senators. “We have been very firm with the Iranians, even on the interim deal, about what we expect.”
In return for Iran agreeing to several concessions, including halting advances on its nuclear program and subjecting its plants to “more vigorous inspections” than the inspections already in place, “what we would do would be to open up the spigot a little bit for a very modest amount of relief that is entirely subject to reinstatement if, in fact, they violated any part of this early agreement,” Obama told The Wall Street Journal CEO Council.
The administration estimates the proposed sanctions relief would be worth $5 billion to $10 billion to Iran, a participant in the White House meeting told the Times.
During the six months of negotiations, “we could see if they could get to the end state of a position where we, the Israelis, the international community, could say with confidence Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon,” Obama told the forum.
The most-recent three-day round of talks ended Nov. 10 after French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius insisted the P5-plus-1 must not acknowledge Iran’s right to enrich uranium and should demand Iran end construction at a plutonium-producing heavy-water reactor in Arak, a city 185 miles southwest of Tehran.
Plutonium can be used to make a nuclear bomb.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said during the meeting he would have to consult with Tehran on the 11th-hour changes, and the talks broke up, British newspaper The Guardian reported.
On Sunday, Zarif was quoted by the semiofficial Iranian Students News Agency as saying Tehran now saw no “necessity” for the P5-plus-1 to recognize Iran’s “right” to enrich uranium — a core demand Iran says is “non-negotiable” — since that right is already asserted and preserved in a U.N. treaty.
Zarif said in a video posted on YouTube Tuesday the P5-plus-1 should take advantage of the “historic opportunity” to resolve the nuclear dispute.
Also Tuesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani spoke on the phone with British Prime Minister David Cameron, in the first direct communication between the two countries’ leaders in a decade.
“Both leaders agreed that significant progress had been made in the recent Geneva negotiations and that it was important to seize the opportunity presented by the further round of talks,” Cameron’s office said after the call.
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WarSclerotic 
November 20, 2013 at 10:38 AM
There is only one objective to Obama’s talking: to cover his American retreat from not just the Middle East, but any potential crisis. The isolationist in America will support him.
November 20, 2013 at 12:46 PM
Norm it is not isolationism but globalism behind the actions of obama and his masters
November 20, 2013 at 7:23 PM
Norm is right.
Joop is also right as far as advancing globalist goals by Obavez is concerned.
This is a contradiction. How can this be?
Actually this seeming contradiction is easy to explain.
While he uses widespread isolationist sentiments to justify America’s retreat, its disengagement, the reduction of America’s influence and the destruction of America’s alliances he promotes globalist goals like increased power of the UN and a reduction of America’s sovereignity.
On the other hand he didn’t give a crap about the UN when he wanted to attack Syria’s Assad with ‘incredibly discreet military strikes’.
He also didn’t give a crap about Brzinsky’s advice concerning Syria.
Brzinsky is often alleged to be his globalist puppet master.
Actually this guy is easy to predict. He is not an isolationist. He is not a globalist.
He wants to make America weak and powerless. He wants to bring America down.
If you view all his actions with that overarching goal in mind, everything he does makes sense and he is pretty consistent.
November 20, 2013 at 7:37 PM
Agreed that it’s the best predictor of Obama’s behavior.
What I still don’t get is the motivation. He’s a lefty, sure. Why does that mandate bringing the US down?
In his position he has to know that the US is the only force in the world that supports even a PART of the lefty agenda.
I know he’s exceptionally smart. What ideology or influence has led him to hurt his own ideals so thoroughly?
It will take years and years before we’ll find out for sure.
November 20, 2013 at 9:22 PM
Joseph, are you familiar with Dinesh D’Souza’?
His explanation of Obavez is the best I have seen so far.
Obavez shares the view of many leftists/progressives that ‘imperialist America’ is the source of many of the world’s problems.
This view is a subset of the general view that allmost all evils and injustices in the world are the results oft the evil white European/Western colonization and exploitation of the world.
These views fit nicely into the leftist idea that anyone who becomes wealthy can do this only by taking something away from someone else and not by hard work, ingenuity or education.
This is the whole concept behind ‘social justice’.
These views are also shared by some radical black people like Jeremiah Wright.
That is the core of Marxism and many other ideologies which promote class warfare or which pit one group or race against another.
These ideas attract many followers because they never put the blame on the individiual.
Instead of helping the individual by promoting critical self reflection, by assisting them in their rise out of their misery by themselves they tell them that the individual has no control over his own destiny and that his misery is caused by other groups of people.
From there it follows that the only way out of misery is to take away from those groups or to destroy a certain group of people alltogether.
But in the end they keep those who they allege to care for in a state of dependence and helplessness.
Applying the concept of ‘social justice’ to countries we end up with the idea that the West/Europe/UsA have to transfer their wealth to all the other countries on the planet.
We have to reduce our share of the world’s resources to allow the others to grow, because, you see, the poor countries lack resources.
This is of course a blatant lie bescause many of these poor countries are rich in resources but the profits from these resources go to small, corrupt elites in these countries.
And since the West and especially America is not seen as a source of good (like the immense growth of life expectancy, modern medicine and technology and a dramatic rise of the quality of life even in the 3. world) but as a source of evil, meddling in the affairs of the world and killing and oppressing people in these poor, powerless countries it is only logical that you have to take the power away from the West/US.
That’s why America and the West have to be weakened in the world views, I have described.
It is crucial to understand that Obavez is not an American.
It doesn’t matter one bit whether he is a legitimate or natural citizen or not.
He identifies himself not with America but with Africa, the 3. world and with the land of his father.
Obavez doesn’t have to be a Muslim to have so much sympathy for islam.
Because it is always the fault of the West and never their own fault, he sees the Muslims as a group of people, oppressed, disrespected, exploited and treated as inferiors by the West. That is why he is sympathetic to them. Muslim violence in this view is always a reaction to something evil we have done to them and therefore we have always to acomodate to them and ask what we have done to them to cause their anger or hate.
That was the typical reaction of many leftists after 9/11. “Why do they hate us? It must be because we did something bad to them” or to put in the words of Obavez’ preast, Jeremiah Wright: “The chickens are coming home to roost” and “God damn America”.
In a nutshell Obavez’ world view can be described as follows:
America is a source of evil, oppression and injustice in the world which gained its riches by stealing from the world.
That’S why America’S influence on the world has to be reduced by making America weak and powerless.
THat’s why America has to become poor to give back these riches to the world.
Of course America can also give back by letting the 3. world into America (illegal immigrations amnesty) thus giving those riches back.
November 20, 2013 at 9:28 PM