WarSclerotic

The US and Europeans give Iran a deadline of Saturday night for concluding a nuclear deal.

The big Iranian nuclear sale

American and European negotiators have given Iran until Saturday night, Nov. 23, the fourth day of negotiations in Geneva, to reach agreement on an interim nuclear deal, debkafile’s sources report. After that deadline, those delegations plan to cut the talks short and leave. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif retorted that his government would not bow to threats. The US-EU deadline indicated that Washington, Paris, London and Berlin had reached the limit of their concessions to Iran. UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said when he arrived in Geneva that the two difficulties encountered two weeks ago still remained.  The Russian and Chinese foreign minister have refrained from comment.

See debkafile’s earlier report on this date.

Both sides were pumping up an atmosphere of optimism as the foreign ministers of all six powers facing Iran made tracks for Geneva Saturday morning, Nov. 23, Day Four of the marathon negotiations for an accord on a six-month freeze on Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Hassan Araghchi said the six powers had agreed to respect his country’s right to enrich uranium, so removing a major hurdle in the path of an accord, whereas Foreign Minister Javad Zarif remained silent.

Sergey Lavrov was the first foreign minister to arrive Friday night, followed by Secretary of State John Kerry early Saturday. Both were said to have come to try and narrow the gaps holding up an accord. The Chinese, British, French and German foreign ministers were due in Geneva Saturday morning, after bilateral sessions between Zarif and the other six delegates failed to produce enough progress for them to adjourn to formal negotiations around the same table, least of all reach the signing stage.

This time round, the Iranian team borrowed the Western tactic of constantly maintaining that a deal is within reach. This tactic aims at weakening the resistance of the opposite side by presenting it as dragging out the nerve-wracking talkathon beyond reason. This tactic didn’t work for the Western delegations in the first round of nuclear talks on Nov. 11, which France blew up on the fourth day. The second round had reached the same touch-and-go point by Saturday morning, when none of the six delegations confirmed they had agreed to a clause respecting Iran’s right to enrich uranium as Araghchi had claimed.
This point is pivotal to both sides because it is absent from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which merely specifies that countries are allowed “to pursue peaceful nuclear energy.”

Rewording this provision to cover the right to uranium enrichment would cut the ground from under the entire treaty by throwing the door open for all its signatories to enrich uranium at will.

Tehran’s goal in making this demand is more than legitimacy for its own weapons program. It is also seeks to deprive the big powers of the prerogative to determine the rights of smaller nations.
On this point, therefore, both Iran and the six powers are digging in their heels.

The other major hurdle facing a deal is the Arak heavy water reactor Iran is building.  Tehran refuses to halt construction of this reactor arguing that like any other nation, Iran is entitled to build nuclear reactors for peaceful purposes. They shoot back at any suggestion that the Arak reactor is designed to produce plutonium as fuel for nuclear weapon, along with enriched uranium, with a charge of discrimination, and declare, “Tehran is not going to sign an agreement that permanently put Iran in an outcast category,”

The Iranians have adopted a negotiating strategy of relegating the vital technical aspects of the draft accord to a lower priority while hammering away at issues pertinent to national respect. Iran is fighting in Geneva for international respect as a legitimate and equal nuclear power on the world stage.
This strategy also has a by-product: By the time they get around to the key technical clauses, the negotiators on the other side of the table are too worn down to cope with a new set of Iranian objections.
The biggest obstacle to a deal, however, is to be found in Tehran in the person of the tough, autocratic Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He will have the final word on whether the second round to talks in Geneva produce an accord – not the American or Russian presidents, and certainly not the foreign ministers assembling there.

Khamenei has boosted his heft by making himself unapproachable – even to Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani.  So no one can influence him or even find out where he stands until the text is ready for signing. Even then, Zarif and Araghchi may be told at the last moment to withhold their signatures over some point and return home for further consultations. The six powers will then have to decide whether it is worth taking the negotiations to a third round, as the Congress in Washington fights back by enacting tighter sanctions against Iran.

Who will defend the West?.

By Jennifer Rubin, Updated: November 22 at 1:30 pm

David Ignatius: Backstage brawl over a nuclear deal with Iran – The Washington Post.

By David Ignatius, Saturday, November 23, 1:15 AM

If there’s a fog of war, there can also be a fog of peace — in which even the negotiators aren’t sure of the consequences of what they’ve done. Some of that murkiness surrounds the bargaining in Geneva to limit Iran’s nuclear program. There’s sharp disagreement among observers about the potential risks and benefits of this seeming breakthrough between Iran and the West after 34 years of hostility.

A cautionary historical note comes from Sir Mark Sykes, who negotiated with his French counterpart Francois Georges-Picot the famous 1916 agreement that carved up the Middle East with artificial borders that cause trouble to this day. According to David Fromkin’s masterful study “A Peace to End All Peace,” Sykes said of his strategy meetings with Lord Kitchener to plan policy: “I could never make myself understood; I could never understand what he thought, and he could never understand what I thought.”

As the Iran deal has taken shape, a backstage brawl is developing with Israel and Saudi Arabia, two countries crucially affected by the deal. The unrelenting attacks on the agreement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which are the culmination of four years of mistrust between him and President Obama, are rumbling the bedrock of the U.S.-Israeli relationship — a consequence neither country wants.

But there’s an intriguing upside: The Israeli-Saudi mutual dislike of the Iran nuclear deal, and their de facto alliance against it, may weirdly prove one of the “silver linings” of this negotiation. Indeed, if the Israelis become a protector and defender of the Sunni Muslim countries, that could have lasting security benefits for Israel and might even open the way for progress on the Palestinian issue — without the usual American mediation.

It’s worth remembering, in this regard, that one reason Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin found common ground in 1977 was a mutual fear that the United States might try to impose a comprehensive peace agreement over their heads.

The U.S. opening to Iran will also affect the Sunni-Shiite sectarian schism that is causing so much bloodshed in the Middle East. But it’s hard to predict just how this will play out: Saudi Arabia and other Sunni powers have been waging a proxy war against Iran across the region — in Syria, Iraq, Bahrain and Lebanon. If the United States isn’t careful in how it manages its engagement with Shiite Iran, it could tilt this sectarian conflict even more toward extremist Sunni jihadists and extremist Shiite Hezbollah fighters who increasingly dominate the fight in Syria and elsewhere.

Obama is right to step away from the Sunni-Shiite schism. But an unintended danger would result if the United States were seen to be trading its longtime Sunni allies for new Shiite partners. That would be the equivalent of kicking over the hornet’s nest, making the region even more dangerous.

Another danger looming in the fog of peace is that the agreement being negotiated with Iran is meant to be an interim, first-step pact. Yet diplomatic history is full of interim agreements that never get into second gear. Indeed, they often set the stage for a bloody new round of confrontation as each side jockeys for leverage in the final negotiation. I hope the United States and Iranian negotiators have a clear road map already set for the endgame; otherwise they may quickly lose their way.

A final contrarian point about these negotiations is that even as the United States opens to Iran, it must deepen its commitment to moderate forces in the Arab world. That means working with Egypt (and its backers in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) toward economic and political stability and restoration of civilian government. It means a more muscular policy in Syria, hopefully including protected “safe zones” that can diminish the humanitarian disaster there this winter and bolster moderate forces within both the opposition and the Syrian government.

What Gulf Arabs and Israelis fear most is that U.S. engagement with Iran will be accompanied by American disengagement from the region. This is why Obama’s incessant talk about ending wars in the Middle East and his blink on using military power in Syria frightened these countries. They saw it as a prelude to a general U.S. retreat. Obama must signal that an agreement with Iran is instead a bridge to a regional security framework in which U.S. power remains the guarantor.

Don’t get me wrong: An agreement with Iran is potentially Obama’s greatest success. But it’s worth thinking unconventionally about potential risks, even as we savor the prospect of a diplomatic triumph.

Iran talks at ‘final moment,’ says China | The Times of Israel.

Foreign ministers gather in Geneva in bid for deal on Iran’s nuclear program; if agreement signed, Kerry set to travel on to brief Netanyahu

By AP and Times of Israel staff November 22, 2013, 10:40 pm Updated: November 23, 2013, 11:44 am

US Secretary of State John Kerry, Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, left, the EU’s Catherine Ashton, center, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, right, hold talks over Iran’s nuclear program in Geneva, November 9, 2013. (Photo credit: State Department/Twitter)

GENEVA — Negotiations in Geneva over Iran’s nuclear program have “reached the final moment,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Saturday.

Lei’s comment, communicated by Xinhua, came as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi left Beijing to attend the talks.

Earlier Saturday, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle announced he would also fly to Geneva to attend the negotiations, on the heels of a US State Department announcement that US Secretary of State John Kerry would attend the talks.

Kerry’s wish to attend raised expectations that a deal to curb Tehran’s nuclear program could be in the works.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague announced late Friday that he was also flying to Geneva, and French diplomatic sources said Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius would join them.

Before departing for Geneva, Kerry told reporters he was optimistic that a deal with Iran could be struck — but not necessarily over the next two days. Kerry anticipated flying on to Israel if it an agreement is signed to immediately brief Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the terms.

Netanyahu has been publicly castigating the US over the terms of the emerging deal — which provides for a partial freeze in the Iranian program and the easing of some sanctions — and imploring Kerry not to sign it. Netanyahu has also vowed to “stand alone” if necessary to prevent Iran attaining nuclear weapons.

In Canada on Friday, Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon echoed Netanyahu’s description of the likely deal as “bad.” Ya’alon, who held talks with his US counterpart Chuck Hagel, acknowledged the differences between the US and Israel over the deal, but also stressed the fundamental closeness of the US-Israel alliance.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Kerry would arrive in Geneva early Saturday, joining Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who arrived Friday. The arrival of the foreign ministers will lend weight to negotiations aimed at beginning a rollback of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for easing US and international sanctions.

In a short statement, Psaki confirmed that “after consulting with EU High Representative Ashton and the negotiating team on the ground, Secretary Kerry will travel to Geneva later today with the goal of continuing to help narrow the differences and move closer to an agreement.”

Just two hours earlier, when asked whether Kerry would travel to Switzerland, Psaki would not confirm any such plans. But the secretary’s schedule had been kept open for Friday since the beginning of the week, a fact that had contributed to speculation that he intended to visit Israel.

Negotiators have been working since Wednesday to find language acceptable to Iran and its six negotiating partners — the US, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany.

As negotiations moved into the evening Friday, a diplomat in Geneva for the talks said some progress was being made on a key sticking point — Iran’s claim to a right to produce nuclear fuel. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s top diplomat, have met repeatedly since Wednesday trying to resolve that and other differences.

Israel’s Channel 2 said Iranian participants in the talks claim the P5+1 countries had recognized Iran’s “right” to enrich uranium — a key concession bitterly opposed by Israel as legitimizing Iran’s nuclear program.

The last round of talks between Iran and the six world powers ended Nov. 10 with no deal even after Kerry, Lavrov, the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany and a Chinese deputy foreign minister flew in and attempted to bridge differences.

Zarif and Ashton met briefly Friday for talks that Iran’s official IRNA news agency described as “complicated and tough.” It quoted Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi in Geneva as saying that Iran’s right to uranium enrichment must be part of any deal.

Iran says it is enriching only for reactor fuel, medical uses and research. But the technology can also produce nuclear warhead material.

Zarif last weekend indicated that Iran is ready to sign a deal that does not expressly state Iran’s right to enrich, raising hopes that a deal could be sealed at the current Geneva round.

On Wednesday, however, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said his country would never compromise on “red lines.” Since then Tehran has reverted to its original line — that the six powers must recognize this activity as Iran’s right under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty despite strong opposition by Israel and within the US Congress.

A senior Iranian negotiator said that the Iranian claim did not need to be explicitly recognized in any initial deal, despite Khamenei’s comment. He did suggest, however, that language on that point remained contentious, along with other differences.

The diplomat said work was proceeding on a compromise along the lines of what the Iranian negotiator said — avoiding a direct reference to any country’s right to enrich but still giving enough leeway for Iran to accept it.

Both he and the Iranian envoy demanded anonymity because they were not allowed to discuss the closed negotiations.

Sanctions relief was also an issue.

The United States and its allies have signaled they are ready to ease some sanctions in return for a first-step deal that starts to put limits on Iran’s nuclear program. But they insist that the most severe penalties — on Tehran’s oil exports and banking sector — will remain until the two sides reach a comprehensive agreement to minimize Iran’s nuclear arms-making capacity.

Iran says it does not want such weapons and has indicated it’s ready to start rolling back its program but wants greater and faster sanctions relief than that being offered.

Several US senators — both Democrat and Republican — have voiced displeasure with the parameters of the potential agreement, arguing that the US and its partners are offering too much for something short of a full freeze on uranium enrichment.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday that he would support legislation to expand sanctions against Iran, though he said he also backs the negotiating effort. Reid said the threat of more sanctions was essential to get an acceptable deal.

Sen. Bob Corker, the Republicans’ top member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Thursday proposed a bill outlining a final agreement, including an end to all Iranian enrichment activity, and seeking to restrict President Barack Obama’s capacity to ease sanctions.

Zbigniew Brzezinski: ‘Accommodating’ Iranians Willing To Abandon Nuclear Ambitions | NewsBusters.

Sure, he was careful to couch it.  But the bottom line is that Zbigniew Brzezinski believes that Iran is willing to abandon its goal of acquiring nuclear weapons.

Jimmy Carter’s former national security adviser offered that opinion in response to questioning by former RNC Chairman Michael Steele on today’s Morning Joe.  Brzezinski also claimed that the recent round of negotiations have been “serious, substantive” and that the Iranians have been “accommodating.”

Our ‘Sucker’s Deal’ with Iran | National Review Online.

The so-called interim nuclear agreement is a rescue package for the mullahs.

Secretary of State John Kerry

A president desperate to change the subject and a secretary of state desperate to make a name for himself are reportedly on the verge of an “interim” nuclear agreement with Iran. France called it a “sucker’s deal.” France was being charitable.

The only reason Iran has come to the table after a decade of contemptuous stonewalling is that economic sanctions have cut so deeply — Iran’s currency has collapsed, inflation is rampant — that the regime fears a threat to its very survival.

Nothing else could move it to negotiate. Regime survival is the only thing the mullahs value above nuclear weapons. And yet precisely at the point of maximum leverage, President Obama is offering relief in a deal that is absurdly asymmetric: The West would weaken sanctions in exchange for cosmetic changes that do absolutely nothing to weaken Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.Don’t worry, we are assured. This is only an interim six-month agreement to “build confidence” until we reach a final one. But this makes no sense. If at this point of maximum economic pressure we can’t get Iran to accept a final deal that shuts down its nuclear program, how in God’s name do we expect to get such a deal when we have radically reduced that pressure?

A bizarre negotiating tactic. And the content of the deal is even worse. It’s a rescue package for the mullahs.

It widens permissible trade in oil, gold, and auto parts. It releases frozen Iranian assets, increasing Iran’s foreign-exchange reserves by 25 percent while doubling its fully accessible foreign-exchange reserves. Such a massive infusion of cash would be a godsend for its staggering economy, lowering inflation, reducing shortages, and halting the country’s growing demoralization. The prospective deal is already changing economic expectations. Foreign oil and other interests are reportedly preparing to reopen negotiations for a resumption of trade in anticipation of the full lifting of sanctions.

And for what? You’d offer such relief in return for Iran’s giving up its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Isn’t that what the entire exercise is about?

And yet this deal does nothing of the sort. Nothing. It leaves Iran’s nuclear infrastructure intact. Iran keeps every one of its 19,000 centrifuges — yes, 19,000 — including 3,000 second-generation machines that produce enriched uranium at five times the rate of older models.

Not a single centrifuge is dismantled. Not a single facility that manufactures centrifuges is touched. In Syria, the first thing the weapons inspectors did was to destroy the machines that make the chemical weapons. Then they went after the stockpiles. It has to be that way. Otherwise, the whole operation is an exercise in futility. Take away just the chemical agents, and the weapons-making facilities can replace them at will.

Yet that’s exactly what we’re doing with Iran. The deal would deactivate its 20 percent enriched uranium, which, leaving aside the fact that deactivation is chemically reversible, is quickly replaceable because Iran retains its 3.5 percent uranium, which can be enriched to 20 percent in less than a month.

Result: Sanctions relief that leaves Iran’s nuclear infrastructure untouched, including — and this is where the French gagged — the plutonium facility at Arak, a defiant alternative path to a nuclear weapon.

The point is blindingly simple. Unless you dismantle the centrifuges and prevent the manufacture of new ones, Iran will be perpetually just a few months away from going nuclear. This agreement, which is now reportedly being drafted to allow Iran to interpret it as granting the “right” to enrich uranium, constitutes the West legitimizing Iran’s status as a threshold nuclear state.

Don’t worry, we are assured. The sanctions relief is reversible. Nonsense. It was extraordinarily difficult to cobble together the current sanctions. It took endless years of overcoming Russian, Chinese, and Indian recalcitrance, together with foot-dragging from Europeans making a pretty penny from Iran.

Once the relaxation begins, how do you reverse it? How do you reapply sanctions? There is absolutely no appetite for this among our allies. And adding back old sanctions will be denounced as a provocation that would drive Iran to a nuclear breakout — exactly as Obama is today denouncing congressional moves to increase sanctions as a deal-breaking provocation that might lead Iran to break off talks.

The mullahs are eager for this interim agreement with its immediate yield of political and economic relief. Once they get it, we will have removed their one incentive to conclude the only agreement that is worth anything to us — a verifiable giving up of their nuclear program.

Brilliant.

— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2013 the Washington Post Writers Group

Touch-and-go for nuclear deal Saturday as foreign ministers converge on Geneva.

The big Iranian nuclear sale

Both sides were pumping up an atmosphere of optimism as the foreign ministers of all six powers facing Iran made tracks for Geneva Saturday morning, Nov. 23, Day Four of the marathon negotiations for an accord on a six-month freeze on Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Hassan Araghchi said the six powers had agreed to respect his country’s right to enrich uranium, so removing a major hurdle in the path of an accord, whereas Foreign Minister Javad Zarif remained silent.

Sergey Lavrov was the first foreign minister to arrive Friday night, followed by Secretary of State John Kerry early Saturday. Both were said to have come to try and narrow the gaps holding up an accord. The Chinese, British, French and German foreign ministers were due in Geneva Saturday morning, after bilateral sessions between Zarif and the other six delegates failed to produce enough progress for them to adjourn to formal negotiations around the same table, least of all reach the signing stage.

This time round, the Iranian team borrowed the Western tactic of constantly maintaining that a deal is within reach. This tactic aims at weakening the resistance of the opposite side by presenting it as dragging out the nerve-wracking talkathon beyond reason. This tactic didn’t work for the Western delegations in the first round of nuclear talks on Nov. 11, which France blew up on the fourth day. The second round had reached the same touch-and-go point by Saturday morning, when none of the six delegations confirmed they had agreed to a clause respecting Iran’s right to enrich uranium as Araghchi had claimed.
This point is pivotal to both sides because it is absent from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which merely specifies that countries are allowed “to pursue peaceful nuclear energy.”

Rewording this provision to cover the right to uranium enrichment would cut the ground from under the entire treaty by throwing the door open for all its signatories to enrich uranium at will.

Tehran’s goal in making this demand is more than legitimacy for its own weapons program. It is also seeks to deprive the big powers of the prerogative to determine the rights of smaller nations.
On this point, therefore, both Iran and the six powers are digging in their heels.

The other major hurdle facing a deal is the Arak heavy water reactor Iran is building.  Tehran refuses to halt construction of this reactor arguing that like any other nation, Iran is entitled to build nuclear reactors for peaceful purposes. They shoot back at any suggestion that the Arak reactor is designed to produce plutonium as fuel for nuclear weapon, along with enriched uranium, with a charge of discrimination, and declare, “Tehran is not going to sign an agreement that permanently put Iran in an outcast category,”

The Iranians have adopted a negotiating strategy of relegating the vital technical aspects of the draft accord to a lower priority while hammering away at issues pertinent to national respect. Iran is fighting in Geneva for international respect as a legitimate and equal nuclear power on the world stage.
This strategy also has a by-product: By the time they get around to the key technical clauses, the negotiators on the other side of the table are too worn down to cope with a new set of Iranian objections.
The biggest obstacle to a deal, however, is to be found in Tehran in the person of the tough, autocratic Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He will have the final word on whether the second round to talks in Geneva produce an accord – not the American or Russian presidents, and certainly not the foreign ministers assembling there.

Khamenei has boosted his heft by making himself unapproachable – even to Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani.  So no one can influence him or even find out where he stands until the text is ready for signing. Even then, Zarif and Araghchi may be told at the last moment to withhold their signatures over some point and return home for further consultations. The six powers will then have to decide whether it is worth taking the negotiations to a third round, as the Congress in Washington fights back by enacting tighter sanctions against Iran.