Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Latest negotiations on nuclear program end minus Iran deal
ALMATY, Kazakhstan — Negotiations over Iran’s disputed nuclear program broke off Saturday with scant signs of incremental progress, much less an agreement on tighter controls and tougher international oversight demanded by six world powers in exchange for some easing of sanctions that have a stranglehold on the Iranian economy.
Expectations that the negotiations were making progress rose as an afternoon session continued into the evening. But comments by the two sides after the session ended made clear that negotiations fell far short of making enough headway to qualify the meeting as a success.
The failure to reach any accord was a serious setback for the talks, which have become complicated by the Iranian presidential election just 10 weeks away.
“What matters in the end is substance, and … we are still a considerable distance apart,” Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s head of foreign policy, said at the end of the two-day talks.
No future negotiations were announced, and Ashton said she would be “in touch very soon” with the top Iranian negotiator, Saeed Jalili, “in order to see how to go forward.”
Russia’s lead negotiator at the talks, Sergei Ryabkov, also sounded a dark note but said there was still hope for future discussions.
“Unfortunately, we failed to achieve a breakthrough,” Ryabkov, a deputy foreign minister, said at a briefing at the Russian Consulate in Almaty, according to the Interfax news service. “We’re still on the threshold.”
Israel, which had tempered its repeated threats of
a military strike against Iranian nuclear sites in deference to the diplomatic efforts, pushed for more action.
Urging the international community to set a “short, clear and final timetable” for further talks, Yuval Steinitz, the Israeli minister for intelligence and strategic affairs, said “the time has come for the world to show a more aggressive position and make it abundantly clear to the Iranians that their game of negotiations is coming to an end.”
The Jewish state has said Iran is only a few months away from the threshold of having material to turn into a bomb and has vowed to use all means to prevent it from reaching that point.
Any strike on Iran could provoke fierce retaliation directly from Iran and through its Middle East proxies in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, raising the specter of a larger Middle East conflict and adding to the urgency of keeping both sides at the negotiating table.
Western countries fear Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, while Iran has insisted that its program is for peaceful purposes, including atomic energy and medical research, to which it claims a right as a signer of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Iran has accused the big powers, particularly the United States, of hypocrisy for maintaining their own nuclear arsenals. At the same time, Iran has refused to comply with United Nations Security Council demands that it suspend its uranium-enrichment program, expand access for inspectors and answer questions about its intentions.
The talks in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic that views itself as a model of nuclear nonproliferation, were the fifth round over the past year between Iran and the so-called P5-plus-1. The group consists of the five permanent members of the Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Germany.
Negotiations began last April in Istanbul and were followed by sessions in Baghdad in May, in Moscow in June and in Almaty in February. They have settled into a familiar routine: The big powers demand concrete steps from Iran and a firm commitment to comply with United Nations and other international mandates, only to be faced with delays or complicated counterproposals, including one Friday that a Western diplomat said had left officials “puzzled.”
Western officials had arrived with guarded optimism that Iran would give a concrete response to a February proposal that would provide a modest easing of sanctions in exchange for restrictions on Iran’s supply of enriched uranium. Enriched to high levels, the uranium could be used in nuclear weapons.
The proposal called for Iran to accept broad oversight for all of its nuclear activities by the International Atomic Energy Agency, but the big powers dropped a demand that Iran shut its enrichment plant at Fordo, built deep below a mountain. Instead, Iran would have to suspend its enrichment activities there, and take other steps that would make it difficult to resume quick production of nuclear fuel.
The six powers also had said Iran could keep a small amount of uranium enriched to 20 percent purity, which can be converted relatively quickly to weapons- grade, for use in a reactor to produce medical isotopes.
Iran is operating more than 10,000 centrifuges. While most are enriching below 20 percent, this material, too could be turned into weapons-grade uranium, although with greater effort than is the case for the 20 percent stockpile.
Tehran also is only a few years away from completing a reactor that will produce plutonium, another pathway to nuclear arms.
At a news briefing, Jalili offered a different characterization of the breakdown in discussions. He said Iran had offered proposals largely based on a plan, first put forward in Moscow in June, aimed at addressing some of the international community’s concerns. The six Western powers, he said, responded that they needed time to discuss those proposals with officials back home. He said the plan incorporated the proposal put forward in February and reflected the results of a meeting on technical issues last month in Istanbul.
But Jalili also reiterated Iran’s view that it has a right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes.
“Of course, there is some distance in the position of the two sides,” he said. But he said Iran’s proposals, which required recognizing “our right to enrich and ending behaviors which have every indication of enmity toward the Iranian people,” were designed “to help us move toward a constructive road.”
Jalili said the next move was up to the six powers.
“Good negotiations took place, and in consideration of our new proposals, it is now up to the P5-plus-1 to demonstrate its willingness and sincerity to take appropriate confidence-building steps in the future,” he said.
As the talks neared the scheduled conclusion Saturday evening, some Iranian news organizations quoted an official saying the Iranian negotiators had offered a temporary halt to uranium enrichment at the Fordo plant, calling it a gesture of good faith.
Ashton and Ryabkov also suggested there had been somewhat more productive give-and-take than in previous meetings.
“The Iranians’ position was quite open and quite constructive,” Ryabkov said.
Ashton spoke of “a real back and forth between us when were able to discuss details, to pose questions, and to get answers directly.”
She described the better negotiating climate as a “very important element.”
The failure of the sides to achieve tangible progress — or even a firm date for new talks — was seen by analysts as a disappointment for the President Barack Obama’s administration, though most experts had expected at best modest progress in nuclear talks until after the Iranian presidential election in June. Some experts said the results in Almaty will increase pressure on the White House to further tighten the economic noose on Tehran.
“With another failed round of negotiations, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, is proving once again that he is not interested in compromise,” said Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington policy institute. “He continues to assess that Iranian nuclear physics is beating Western economic pressure.”