Iran rejects ‘excessive demands’ in nuclear talks with six powers
Iran rejects ‘excessive demands’ in nuclear talks with six powers, Reuters, Parisa Hafezi and Justyna Pawlak, June 20, 2014
An Iranian flag flutters in front of the United Nations headquarters in Vienna June 17, 2014. CREDIT: REUTERS/HEINZ-PETER BADER
Diplomats from the six powers told Reuters earlier in the week that the most formidable dispute in the talks was over the number of centrifuges Tehran will be allowed to keep to enrich uranium under any deal.
There are other sticking points in addition to centrifuges. One official from the six told Reuters that the Western powers want the duration of any agreement to be two decades, while Tehran has said it would be willing to accept five years.
Still, senior officials close to the talks said both sides are keen for a deal.
(Reuters) – Iran told six big powers on Friday it would not accept their “excessive demands” after the latest talks on lifting sanctions against Tehran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear work yielded no breakthrough, with a deadline for a deal just a month away.
U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman said it was Iran that would need to shift its position: “What is still unclear is if Iran is really ready and willing to take all the necessary steps to assure the world that its nuclear programme is and will remain exclusively peaceful.”
The stakes are high in the Vienna talks, which will resume on July 2, as the powers seek a negotiated solution to a more-than-decade-long standoff with Iran that has raised fears of a new Middle East war and a regional nuclear arms race.
Sherman noted at the end of five days of negotiations in the Austrian capital that Tehran had always maintained that it wants only civilian nuclear energy. “If that is indeed the case, then a good agreement is obtainable,” the U.S. delegation chief said.
Iran and the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany are striving for a comprehensive settlement by July 20, a deadline set as part of an interim deal struck last year.
A six-month extension of the talks is a possibility but could be politically difficult for the United States, since the administration of President Barack Obama would almost certainly seek the approval of Congress, where hawkish lawmakers are suspicious of Iran and dislike the idea of engagement with it.
Diplomats from the six powers told Reuters earlier in the week that the most formidable dispute in the talks was over the number of centrifuges Tehran will be allowed to keep to enrich uranium under any deal.
Western officials say that the six powers want this number to be in the low thousands, below the capacity that could allow Iran to quickly accumulate enough material for a nuclear bomb.
Iran insists on tens of thousands of centrifuges to churn out fuel for a future network of civilian nuclear power stations, although this would take many years to build.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif highlighted the wide gulf between the sides, urging the six nations to “abandon excessive demands which will not be accepted by Iran”.
“Still we have not overcome disputes about major issues,” he told reporters as five days of negotiations in Vienna wound up. “There has been progress, but major disputes remain.”
He made clear there was no agreement yet between Iran and the six on a draft text of an agreement. A senior Chinese official said the two sides had put together a “textual framework”, though gave no details.
“The fact that (we came up) with this text is progress … in procedural terms,” China’s Wang Qun told reporters.
Sherman described the text as a “working document” that is “heavily bracketed” due to remaining disagreements, making clear much work remains to reach an accord.
POWERS WANT 20-YEAR DEAL, IRAN WANTS 5 YEARS
So far, diplomats said, Russia and China – traditionally more accommodating of Iran’s nuclear stance – have backed up the U.S. and European demands on Tehran’s centrifuge capacity, though they support the idea of moving more swiftly to ease the sanctions that have crippled the oil-dependent Iranian economy.
A senior diplomat from one of the major powers said all six were united in their positions on the permissible scope of Iran’s enrichment programme and that they had presented “pretty detailed” proposals on that issue.
“There are very, very difficult decisions to be taken here by Iran,” said a senior U.S. official, asking for anonymity.
There are other sticking points in addition to centrifuges. One official from the six told Reuters that the Western powers want the duration of any agreement to be two decades, while Tehran has said it would be willing to accept five years.
Still, senior officials close to the talks said both sides are keen for a deal. Perhaps signalling its desire for a successful outcome, Iran has acted to eliminate virtually all of its most sensitive stockpile of enriched uranium gas, the U.N. nuclear watchdog reported on Friday.
That requirement was included in the interim deal reached in Geneva last November that bought time for the current negotiations on a long-term agreement.
A spokesman for European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who coordinates the talks, said only that the two sides had begun drafting the text of a deal during their fifth round of negotiations this year.
“We have worked extremely hard all week to develop elements we can bring together when we meet for the next round in Vienna, beginning on July 2,” Michael Mann said in a statement.
Iran denies any nuclear arms ambitions and demands crippling economic sanctions, eased slightly in recent months, be removed fast under any settlement – something Western governments are loath to do too soon, believing Tehran will otherwise lose incentive to comply fully with terms of a final deal.
Other issues awaiting resolution include the breadth and depth of U.N. nuclear watchdog monitoring of Iranian nuclear sites and the future of Iran’s planned Arak research reactor, a potential source of plutonium for atomic bombs. Iran says the reactor will make isotopes for medical care and agriculture.
Israel’s government, which has vocally opposed diplomacy with its arch-enemy Iran, has suggested it could bomb Iranian atomic facilities if diplomacy fails to head off the risk of a nuclear-armed Iran. Tehran says it is Israel’s presumed nuclear arsenal that is the main threat to regional peace and stability.
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WarSclerotic 
June 21, 2014 at 4:07 AM
Was never going to succeed, just bought Iranians time.
June 21, 2014 at 4:28 AM
What happened to Netanyahu’s guarantee that Iran would not get nukes? What happened to the black bomb and the red line?
Great trade Netanyahu made getting one Israeli back for over a thousand terrorist; and now three more Israelis abducted. Did any of the supposedly intelligent Israel leaders not see this coming? For god sakes a fucking five year old could have seen this coming.
Abbas et.al are playing Israel like a puppet on a string. “Abbas should be praised for saying this abduction should never have happened.” What a Fucking joke. The Palestinians have been playing good cop bad cop for years and the idiots in Tel Aviv still can’t figure the ruse out. “Abbas a great statesman.” My god are you people really that stupid? I’m beginning to think you are!
June 21, 2014 at 4:44 AM
Abbas represents no one. His term ran out years ago. Hamas will soon by running the store. But idiotic Israel politicians are calling him a great statesman. You people have yourselves so tied in knots that you’ve lost total sense of reality. Wake up, the fucking Barbarians are at the gates and they’re not bring gifts and flowers.
June 21, 2014 at 12:03 PM
Now is the time to “clean house,” John.
While the world is panicking about ISIS and Hamas kidnapped 3 kids? A better opportunity may not arise.
If Netanyahu fails to take advantage of this opportunity, I’ll find myself closer to your opinion of him than ever before.
JW
June 21, 2014 at 3:26 PM
JW, it’s truly frustrating seeing you guys being treated like this. It’s time to start cracking a few heads over there. GOD bless Israel.
June 22, 2014 at 4:51 AM
“I’ll find myself closer to your opinion ….”
This is getting scary. 😉
June 21, 2014 at 7:11 PM
Netanyahu to Obama: IDF on the Jordan is sole security guarantee against ISIS for Israel, Hashemite kingdom and Palestinians
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report June 21, 2014, 5:36 PM (GMT+02:00)
“Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu posted notes Friday, June 20, to President Barack Obama, King Abdullah of Jordan and Chairman Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, debkafile’s exclusive sources in Washington and Jerusalem reveal. They dealt with the rapid advances made by Al Qaeda-related Sunni Islamist fighters in Iraq, now heading towards the Iraqi-Syrian-Jordanian border intersection and how they bore on the security of Israel, the Palestinians and Kingdom of Jordan just next door.
Netanyahu’s main point was that Israel’s armed forces (the IDF) are the only army in the region with the capabilities and counter-terrorism experience for standing up to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and therefore buttressing the rule of Jordan’s King Abdullah and Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah against jihadist incursions.
And so it is essential to maintain the fortifications on the River Jordan border manned by the IDF and continue to work in partnership with the Jordanian army to provide a solid bulwark against a potential ISIS push from Iraq toward the west.
Netanyahu cited Obama’s proposition Thursday, June 19, with regard to the Iraq crisis. The president said: “I think that the key to both Syria and Iraq is going to be a combination of what happens inside the country… and us laying down a more effective counterterrorism platform that gets all the countries in the region pulling in the same direction.”
In the prime minister’s view, one of those platforms is already in place in southern Syria as a result of a combined US- Israeli-Jordanian military effort.
Saturday, June 21, the Iraqi jihadists seized the strategic Iraqi-Syrian border crossing at Qaim (pop: a quarter of a million). Witnesses reported hundreds of Iraqi soldiers dropping their weapons and fleeing in all directions after 30 of their number were killed in battle.
This conquest brought ISIS that much closer to the intersection of the Iraqi, Syrian and Jordanian borders, which is situated in terrain marked by deep wadis and dense foliage, and therefore popular with the smugglers of arms, drugs and oil, who move between Iraq and Jordan.
That being so, the Sunni Islamists’ control of the Qaim crossing point poses a direct threat to Jordan, as well as providing them with an open route for the easy transfer of fighters and heavy weapons between their two battlefields in Iraq and Syria, and of fuel from the Syrian oil fields which they now manage to their brothers fighting in Iraq.
In eastern Jordan, Al Qaeda owns a reserve of adherents, some of whom fought under its flag in Afghanistan, others against American forces in Iraq under the command of their compatriot, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the years 2003-2007.
In the last three years, Jordanian extremists have fought with Al Qaeda and other Islamist elements in the Syrian civil uprising against Bashar Assad.
debkafile’s counter-terror sources report that thousands of these Islamists, some after advanced combat training, are concentrated in and around the Jordanian towns of al-Zarqa, al-Rusaifa, Salt and Irbid.
Jordanian security services, concerned to stop them heading out for Iraq, this week opened the jail door for the influential Islamic leader, Sheik Isam al-Barqawi – aka as Abu Muhammad al-Maqdis – who is the head of the Jordanian Salafi movement. In the deal for his early release from a long prison sentence, the sheik undertook to use his sermons to preach against the Jordanian Islamists joining up for the ISIS-led jihad.
According to our sources, Netanyahu inserted in his note to Obama a new piece of intelligence, that ISIS liaison officers had recently entered the Sinai Peninsula to embed a branch of their organization in the local Al Qaeda network, known as Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, which has operational ties with the Palestinian Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip.”
Quote from Apocalypse Now.
Kurtz: “I’ve seen horrors… horrors that you’ve seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that… but you have no right to judge me. It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror… Horror has a face… and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies! I remember when I was with Special Forces… seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn’t see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember… I… I… I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn’t know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it… I never want to forget. And then I realized… like I was shot… like I was shot with a diamond… a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God… the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men… trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love… but they had the strength… the strength… to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral… and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling… without passion… without judgment… without judgment! Because it’s judgment that defeats us.”
June 21, 2014 at 7:20 PM
Israel, to Islamists is a thorn stuck in the side of Islam and the forming Caliphate and they mean to remove it. Israelis needs to start fighting or start leaving. Israel can no long sit behind walls and hope to be safe. It is written!
June 21, 2014 at 10:46 PM
Has anyone ever wondered how many tunnels might be coursing under Israel?
“The tunnels of Củ Chi are an immense network of connecting underground tunnels located in the Củ Chi district of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam, and are part of a much larger network of tunnels that underlie much of the country. The Củ Chi tunnels were the location of several military campaigns during the Vietnam War, and were the Viet Cong’s base of operations for the Tết Offensive in 1968.
The tunnels were used by Viet Cong soldiers as hiding spots during combat, as well as serving as communication and supply routes, hospitals, food and weapon caches and living quarters for numerous North Vietnamese fighters. The tunnel systems were of great importance to the Viet Cong in their resistance to American forces, and helped to counter the growing American military effort.”
July 19, 2014 at 2:37 AM
As outsider and not knowing what Netayanhu and his advisors and others from his administration know that is not for public consumption-I will hazard to guess that Israel is in the throes of a major war whether it chooses for it to be limited or not.Now it would seem for it to be the time to completely eliminate Hamas.Then only Lebanon is left.Finally,it can proceed to its mission in Iran if that is still in the works.The west just gave Iran another four months of negotiations.