Iran sees 'window of opportunity' to reach deal on nuclear talks

[Jefferson23]

5 hours ago

Iran’s top leader said on Sunday no deal would be better than a bad deal when it comes to negotiations with world powers over the country’s disputed nuclear programme.

Foreign minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, meanwhile, told a gathering of the world’s top diplomats and defense officials that “this is the opportunity” for a deal.

The United States and its five negotiating partners, the other members of the UN Security Council and Germany, hope to clinch a deal setting long-term limits on Tehran’s enrichment of uranium and other activity that could produce material for use in nuclear weapons.

Iran insists it has the right to enrich uranium and has demanded the lifting of crippling international sanctions. Tehran insists its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful despite western suspicions it has a military component.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/08/iran-opportunity-reach-deal-nuclear-talks

[Jefferson23]

1. The liar and war monger who will not sign the NPT and will not discuss their arsenal, speaks:

Netanyahu: US, Iran galloping towards deal which threatens Israel

Prime Minister Netanyahu says US, Iranian commitment to reach nuclear deal with Iran by March a danger to Israel, vows Israel 'will do everything, take any action to foil this bad deal.'

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4624318,00.html

[pinto]

2. Mixed messages, but I guess that's the nature of the game.

[Jefferson23]

3. I think that is true in situations as high stakes as this one, yes.

President Obama wants this deal, quite badly..has been working toward it for a
long time. It has been an interesting process and hopefully will end well.

[Jefferson23]

4. ( Reminder ) UN resolution: Israel must renounce nuclear arms December 2, 2014

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved an Arab-backed resolution Tuesday calling on Israel to renounce possession of nuclear weapons and put its nuclear facilities under international oversight.

The resolution, adopted in a 161-5 vote, noted that Israel is the only Middle Eastern country that is not party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. It called on Israel to "accede to that treaty without further delay, not to develop, produce test or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons, to renounce possession of nuclear weapons" and put its nuclear facilities under the safeguard of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency.

The United States, Canada, Palau and Micronesia joined Israel in opposing the measure, while 18 countries abstained.

Israel is widely considered to possess nuclear arms but declines to confirm it.

The resolution, introduced by Egypt, echoed a similar Arab-backed effort that failed to gain approval in September at the Vienna-based IAEA. At the time, Israel criticized Arab countries for undermining dialogue by repeatedly singling out the Jewish state in international arenas. Israel's U.N. Mission did not immediately return a request for comment Tuesday.

http://news.yahoo.com/un-assembly-calls-israel-join-nuclear-treaty-174032033.html

[Purveyor]

5. kick. Thanks for posting. I was just about to wind this one up... +1 eom

[Jefferson23]

6. The Real Problem of ‘Getting to Yes’ With Iran

Unless Washington figures out that its strategy will not work with Iran, we must expect stalemate and a much higher level of US-Iranian tensions.


by Gareth Porter

Talking to reporters Monday, President Obama asked rhetorically, “[D]oes Iran have the political will and desire to get a deal done?” Iran “should be able to get to yes,” Obama said. “But we don’t know if that is going to happen. They have their hard-liners, they have their politics….”

The idea that Iranian agreement to US negotiating demands is being held back by “politics” is a familiar theme in US public pronouncements on these negotiations. The only reason Iran has not accepted the deal offered by the United States, according to the standard official view, is that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is a hardliner who is constraining the more reasonable Iranian negotiating team from making the necessary compromises.

But that is a self-serving understanding of the problem, and it reflects a much more profoundly distorted view of US - Iran relations on the nuclear issue. The premise of Obama’s remark was that US demands are purely rational and technical in nature, when nothing could be further from the truth. The US proposal on enrichment capacity is justified by the concept of “breakout”, which experts acknowledge is based on a completely implausible scenario. But Iran has now had a “breakout” capability – meaning the capability to enrich enough uranium at weapons grade level for a single bomb - for six years. So the US insistence on reducing its capability so that the breakout timeline is a few months longer clearly has nothing to do with denying a nuclear weapons capability.

But the official narrative clings to the idea that Iran is acting irrationally in refusing to accept that US demand. The clearest illustrations of this warped US understanding of the negotiations is a long essay last month by former US proliferation official Robert Einhorn. Analysing the reason for the failure of the talks to date, he blames “deep divisions within the Iranian elite,” and specifically the position of the supreme leader. Einhorn cites a speech by Khamenei in Qom on 7 January, where he quotes Khamenei as concluding, “By relying on the nation and domestic forces, we must act in such a way that even if the enemy does not lift the sanctions, no blow will be struck against the people’s progress….”

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/02/14/real-problem-getting-yes-iran

[quadrature]

7. perhaps someone could suggets what a final deal would entail....

what would a final deal look like?

all I see here is...
delays, bs, delays, secret bs, delays,
dancing around, more bs.

so Iran will continue to enrich U.,
but not explode a bomb until
after Jan.2017
..is that the deal?

[Jefferson23]

8. The delays are important to understand from each side..that is where you learn what they'll

consider feasible..agreeing on a deal or not. Iran, from their perspective, has offered a means
to build confidence in the negotiations,when they made the decision to freeze their development of its enrichment capabilities.


They do not feel the US is ever satisfied and one reason for that, is the neocon view of Iran as
the boogie man..the intel is questionable as was the intel as it related to wmd in Iraq. Some feel
that Obama has accepted this false premise due to pressure from the concept of the breakout theory,
despite much that refutes it as credible.

Appears clear Obama wants very much to find a way to make a final agreement, and no,
I have no idea what any final deal will look like. Right now, the information coming from
Obama is that he is pushing back against the neocons and those in his own party and
how successful he will be at this point is anyone's guess.