West and Iran Seen as Nearing a Nuclear Deal
Jason Decrow/Associated Press
Negotiating With a Different Iran: Iran is in a much different position now to negotiate on its nuclear program than it was four years ago when President Obama first broached the subject.
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
Published: November 7, 2013 215 Comments
GENEVA — After years of fruitless negotiations, Western and Iranian diplomats are on the verge of an agreement that would freeze Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for an easing of some economic sanctions.
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U.S. Will Ease Sanctions if Iran Halts Nuclear Program, Official Says (November 7, 2013)
Martial Trezzini/Keystone, via Associated Press
Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif of Iran on Thursday.
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Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to travel here on Friday at the invitation of Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, in an effort “to help narrow differences,” a senior State Department official said. If that goes well, the pact could be announced later in the day, Iranian officials said.
But even as the two sides tried to finalize the agreement on Thursday, fissures have widened between the United States and some of its principal allies over the potential pact, which has been hailed by the Obama administration as a possible breakthrough in the standoff over Iran’s nuclear aspirations but dismissed by critics as a temporizing measure that would leave the core of Tehran’s atomic program intact.
Mr. Kerry and senior American officials here have promoted the idea of a multistage agreement as a hardheaded response to the new Iranian leadership of President Hassan Rouhani. The first phase of the accord would suspend Iran’s nuclear effort for as long as six months in return for limited sanctions relief, which could include access to frozen assets.
“We are asking them to step up and provide a complete freeze over where they are today,” Mr. Kerry said Thursday during a trip to the Middle East. “Iran knows that if they don’t meet the standards of the international community, the sanctions could be increased and even worse.”
Vigorously defending their approach, Obama administration officials cast the negotiations as a last, best chance to pull Iran back from the nuclear threshold, giving negotiators time to pursue a more sweeping accord.
Proponents say the deal has the potential not just to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon but also to open the way to a historic warming of relations between the nations, though American officials say there is no indication so far that Iran is willing to alienate traditional allies like the Shiite militant group Hezbollah or President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
Critics, however, are not waiting for an agreement to be announced before denouncing it as a failure of will. On Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel warned of a “grievous historic error” that he said would enable Iran to keep enriching uranium and preserve the option of developing nuclear arms while undermining support in the international community for economic sanctions.
“If the news that I am receiving of the impending proposal by the P5-plus-1 is true, this is the deal of the century, for Iran,” Mr. Netanyahu told a visiting delegation of American lawmakers, using the phrase for the world powers involved in the talks, and taking a stance that echoes similar worries in Saudi Arabia.
Mr. Netanyahu and other critics, in effect, fear that what the administration paints as a “first step” toward a more sweeping agreement may actually turn out to be the last. They have urged that the West retain and even toughen sanctions, until Iran is prepared to completely abandon its uranium enrichment ability and dismantle its nuclear program.
The outburst of controversy even before an agreement has been reached illustrates the tremendous difficulties the Obama administration faces in keeping a coalition together, especially one including Congress, throughout what promises to be a long and difficult diplomatic path to pursuing broader constraints on Iran’s nuclear operations.
Far from cooling passions over Iran, each step in the process seems to inflame them.
Robert Einhorn, a former State Department official who supports the administration’s negotiating strategy, dismissed as “not achievable” the maximalist approach advocated by Mr. Netanyahu.
“I don’t think any Iranian government could sell that deal at home,” Mr. Einhorn said during a conference call hosted by the Israel Project, a nonprofit organization that promotes Israel’s security. “I think we would pay a price in terms of the unraveling of sanctions if it looked like we, and not the Iranians, were the cause of the impasse.”
But Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said an interim agreement would go over badly with the allies and in Congress.
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