Kerry defends joining Iranian nuclear talks
WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry defended U.S. participation in global talks aimed at limiting Iran’s nuclear program in the face of criticism from members of Congress and Israeli leaders who say negotiators should wait until economic sanctions apply more pressure.
“We are not blind, and I don’t think we’re stupid,” Kerry said on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “We have a pretty strong sense of how to measure whether or not we are acting in the interests of our country and of the globe, and particularly of our allies like Israel and Gulf states and others in the region.”
Iran and six other nations failed last week to reach a deal limiting the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, creating an opening for opponents in Israel, Saudi Arabia and Washington to lobby against any agreement before negotiations resume. The next round of talks has been scheduled to begin Nov. 20, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine
Ashton, said Sunday.
The agreement that was weighed during talks in Geneva would have offered Iran a temporary easing of the sanctions on petrochemicals, gold and auto trade and some access to frozen assets, according to diplomats who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak.
Toward the end of the talks, some diplomats believed that only a handful of words in the agreement appeared to separate the two sides.
However, the Iranian government’s insistence on formal recognition of its “right” to enrich uranium emerged as a major obstacle, diplomats said Sunday.
A senior U.S. official said it was the Iranian delegation that balked at completing an interim agreement, saying that it had to engage in additional consultations in Tehran before proceeding further.
A senior U.S. official who briefed Israeli reporters and experts in Jerusalem on Sunday said the six world powers had approved a working document and presented it to the Iranians, according to Herb Keinon of The Jerusalem Post, who attended the briefing.
“It was too tough for them,” Keinon quoted the U.S. official as saying of the Iranians. “They have to go back home, talk to their government and come back.”
Kerry expressed confidence Sunday that more talks can achieve an agreement and said it’s more important to “get the right deal” rather than rush. He also said the U.S. isn’t taking a military strike off the table if Iran doesn’t agree to terms.
U.S. lawmakers Sunday said they intend to boost the pressure on Iran. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez, D-N.J., said he will advance a package of added economic sanctions against Iran that could be lifted if an “acceptable” deal on the nation’s nuclear program is struck. He didn’t specify what type of sanctions he would support.
He said further action would provide “insurance” to the U.S. that fall-back penalties would be in place if Iran won’t agree to conditions that the U.S. and its allies can approve.
“I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Senate to move forward on a package that ultimately will send a very clear message where we intend to be if the Iranians don’t strike a deal to stop their nuclear weapons program,” Menendez said on ABC’s This Week.
Republicans in Congress also called Sunday for further action, in advance of a bipartisan meeting with Kerry this week to discuss their concern.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said many lawmakers share his view “that sanctions and the threat of military force is the only thing that’s going to bring the Iranians to the table.”
Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said Sunday he’s concerned the U.S. is giving up needed leverage in talks by not first allowing existing economic sanctions to have a greater effect. He said he fears a “partial deal” that ends with the talks being as unsuccessful as past efforts to curtail North Korea’s nuclear program.
At the same time, Corker said, it’s not yet clear whether lawmakers will proceed with further sanctions because it would take at least several months for any further U.S. actions to have any effect on Iran’s economy.
FRENCH CONCERNS
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters early Sunday that more work is needed on an Iran accord. On Saturday, he raised concern that not enough restrictions had been imposed on Iran’s partly built Arak heavy-water reactor or the country’s stockpiles of enriched uranium and capacity to make more.
France, analysts say, was motivated by factors including its tough stand against the spread of nuclear weapons, skepticism about Tehran’s trustworthiness and the longstanding French tradition of speaking out on the world stage. Critics faulted France for purported grandstanding and seeking closer ties with Iran’s foes.
France has had deep ties to Iran over the years, notably striking business deals and hosting reformist former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami in the late 1990s.
France was a major partner of the shah, and also harbored Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei in exile before he returned home to lead the Islamic Revolution. Today, the outspoken opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, has its base in the Paris suburbs.
Israel, Saudi Arabia and some members of the U.S. Congress have been lobbying against any deal that would allow Iran to keep sensitive nuclear technologies and to press for new sanctions. After a stop in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, later Sunday, Kerry was to fly back to Washington to brief lawmakers and try to head off further congressional penalties that President Barack Obama’s administration says could scuttle an accord.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday urged Obama and other world leaders to reject any deal that doesn’t curb or dismantle Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon.
In phone calls with the heads of five of the six countries negotiating a deal with Iran, “I told them that according to the information reaching Israel, the apparent deal is bad and dangerous,” Netanyahu said Sunday in remarks broadcast from his weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. “It is dangerous not just for us, it is also dangerous for them.”
In an interview from Jerusalem on Sunday with CBS’s Face the Nation, Netanyahu said Iran is becoming a “threshold nuclear nation,” negotiating a plan in which it “gives practically nothing and gets a hell of a lot.” He said lifting the sanctions is like “putting a hole in your tire and letting all the air out. Soon you have a flat tire.”
Wendy Sherman, the senior State Department official who heads the U.S. delegation to the nuclear talks, flew to Israel on Sunday, aiming to influence Israeli public opinion, first with a session for Israeli diplomatic correspondents and then with a private dinner at the King David Hotel that included a prominent Israeli columnist, a leading Israeli television and radio anchor, and several researchers from the Institute for National Security Studies.
Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who left the Obama administration earlier with year, said Sunday that he understands Netanyahu’s skepticism. Any deal must be very specific, Panetta said, and address such matters as what Iran will do with the enriched fuel it already has and what it will do with its heavy-water reactor, which could produce plutonium.
“Iran is a country that has promoted terrorism,” Panetta, who was also CIA director, said on Face the Nation. “They’ve had a hidden enrichment facility that we had to find out about. So we’ve got to be skeptical and make sure that, even with some kind of interim agreement, that we know what the next steps are going to be in order to ensure that they really do stand by their word.”
On Sunday, Kayhan, a hard-line newspaper associated with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called the results of the latest round of talks “ambiguous” and declared that world powers were “blackmailing” Iran.
Moderates supportive of the government of President Hassan Rouhani tended to follow the line of Foreign Secretary Mohammad Javad Zarif, who was present in Geneva for the talks and appeared optimistic after negotiations ended early Sunday.
“We are all on the same wavelength, and that is important. That gives us impetus to move forward the next time,” Zarif said. “It’s something we can build on and move forward.”
The semi-official Fars news agency pointed to “destructive roles of France and Israel” for the failure of negotiators to reach an interim deal.
Fars accused Fabius, who told French radio that Paris could not accept a “sucker’s deal,” of packing a metaphorical “revolver” to the sessions.