Risk of Military Strike Wanes as Iran Talks Resume
Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) - There’s scant hope for a breakthrough next week when negotiators from the U.S. and five other nations meet Iranians for long-awaited talks over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions, according to current and former Western and Iranian officials.
While a sanctions campaign by the U.S. and European Union has hurt the Persian Gulf state’s economy and reduced its oil revenues, the penalties have yet to persuade Iran to bow to international demands to curtail its atomic program.
The sanctions continue to bite, yet the tension that hung over Iran’s nuclear program last year -- when Israel’s leaders raised the threat of a military strike and pressed the U.S. to do the same -- has dissipated. More than a dozen Western diplomats and analysts said in interviews that the focus now is on seeking confidence-building gestures to make possible future step-by-step agreements.
“I am not optimistic” about the outlook for a deal “but I am hopeful that, at a bare minimum, they will keep them going and they will set a date and place for the next meeting,” Thomas Pickering, a former undersecretary of state for political affairs and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said in an interview yesterday.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-22/risk-of-military-strike-wanes-as-iran-talks-resume.html
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