WarSclerotic

The latest round of nuclear talks in Geneva opened Wednesday with a certain chill in the air, after the Iranians said that world powers need to regain their trust. This was Iran’s way of taking revenge on France for the previous round of talks, in which French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius intervened and thwarted the interim deal that the Iranians were hoping for.

Yet the first meeting between European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Wednesday was all smiles. It is thought that the interim deal is already on the table and all that remains now is to refine the details. Under the deal, Iran will suspend its nuclear program in exchange for easing sanctions.

“We had a good conversation with Ashton,” Zarif said. “We are talking now about the procedure of the talks, not about the draft [agreement].”

But the spirit changed later when Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said, “The lost trust should be revived.”

While the Ashton-Zarif meeting lasted close to two hours, the meeting between representatives of Iran and the six world powers took less than 15 minutes.

A spokesperson for Ashton said, “There were differences of opinion and we hope we can bridge them.”

An American source tried to exude optimism, but he said that “the talks are tough” and added that “it’s not certain at all that we will reach an agreement this week.”

Meanwhile, a Russian source told Israel Hayom that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov would arrive in Geneva on Friday, which again raises the possibility that an agreement is near.

An Iranian source posited an interesting thought — that an interim deal would not be signed during the current round of talks (which is the third round of talks in the past two months), but that a “kind of understanding” would be reached. If the goal of the Iranians is to buy time, they are doing an excellent job. The sanctions may still be in place, but the centrifuges are also still spinning.

The tougher Iranian tone may have been connected to the exceptionally virulent speech delivered by Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday.

“The representatives of the Zionist regime cannot call themselves human beings, they are like animals,” Khamenei told Basij militiamen. Khamenei called Israel “the rabid dog of the region that is determined to blacken Iran’s good name.” He also “prophesized” that “the Zionist regime is doomed to failure and destruction” and said that “the Zionist regime was created by force and no phenomenon that was created by force has survived.”

Ashton’s spokesperson and the Americans refused to comment on Khamenei’s vitriol. French President François Hollande said, “Iran must offer answers and not a certain number of provocative statements.” A French government spokesperson called Khamenei’s statements “unacceptable.”

An Iranian source in Geneva characterized Khamenei’s speech as a typical game played by the Iranian government: Khamenei plays the bad guy while Iranian President Hassan Rouhani plays the good guy. While Khamenei’s speech was directed toward fundamentalists at home, it also sent a message to the West — it would be better for you to make a deal with Iran before it becomes impossible.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry dropped a bombshell on Wednesday when he told reporters that the issue of uranium enrichment is not even on the agenda for the talks on the interim agreement. “We are at the initial stage of determining whether or not there is a first step that could be taken, and that certainly will not be resolved in any first step, I can assure you,” Kerry said about uranium enrichment.

Kerry’s boss, U.S. President Barack Obama, continued to insist that the emerging deal would halt Iran’s nuclear progress and set back some of the components of Iran’s nuclear program that had brought Iran close to “breakout” capability. According to Obama, the deal would ensure tighter monitoring of Iran’s nuclear program, including daily inspections. At a Wall Street Journal event in Washington on Wednesday, Obama said that Iran would get only “very modest” sanctions relief under the terms of the deal and expressed confidence that the sanctions regime would not fall apart due to this.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro made it clear on Wednesday night that the military option is still on the table vis-à-vis Iran. At a Haifa University event, Shapiro said, “Our objective is clear: to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, through diplomacy and sanctions if possible, but also through other ways, including the military option, if necessary.”

With the renewal of talks in Geneva, the Israeli cabinet sent a message to the Knesset on Wednesday, saying, “Israel reserves the right to defend itself, by itself.”