Netanyahu says nuclear deal with Iran would be a 'mistake of historic proportions'

[bsteadman]

Netanyahu says nuclear deal with Iran would be a 'mistake of historic proportions'

The Jerusalem Post
Herb Keinon, Reuters
11/7/2013

Excerpt:

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned on Thursday against an agreement with Iran that stops short of getting it to halt its uranium enrichment, amid reports that just such a deal was in the works.

"Israel understands that there are proposals on the table in Geneva today that would ease the pressure on Iran for concessions that are not concessions at all. This proposal would allow Iran to retain the capabilities to make nuclear weapons," he said during a speech to the Jewish Agency.

"This proposal will allow Iran to preserve its ability to build a nuclear weapon. Israel is completely opposed to these proposals. I believe that adopting them would be a mistake of historic proportions and they should be completely rejected," he said.

Netanyahu's comments came as Iran and the P5+1, made up of the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, resumed negotiations in Geneva.

"The sanctions regime brought the Iranian economy to the brink of the abyss, and the policies of the P5+1 can force Iran to completely dismantle its nuclear weapons program, and that means stopping all enrichment,, and all work on the heavy water reactor and on plutonium," he said.

Netanyahu added that "anything less" would decrease the chances of reaching an agreement through peaceful means. "Israel always reserves the right to defend itself, by itself, against any threat," he asserted.

The powers hope to reach a "first step" deal to ease concern over Tehran's nuclear program - which the West fears may be aimed at developing a nuclear weapons capability - though both sides say a breakthrough is far from certain.

Iran, which says its nuclear program is a peaceful energy project, wants them to start lifting tightening sanctions that are severely damaging the OPEC producer's economy.

Both sides have limited space for compromise, with hardliners in Iran and hawks in Washington likely to denounce any concession they see as going too far.
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http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Net...ortions-330907

[bsteadman]

Exclusive: Obama’s Secret Iran Détente

The Daily Beast
Eli Lake, Josh Rogin
11/8/2013

Excerpt:

Long before a nuclear deal was in reach, the U.S. was quietly lifting some of the financial pressure on Iran, a Daily Beast investigation reveals. How the sanctions were softened.

The Obama administration began softening sanctions on Iran after the election of Iran’s new president in June, months before the current round of nuclear talks in Geneva or the historic phone call between the two leaders in September.

While those negotiations now appear on the verge of a breakthrough the key condition for Iran—relief from crippling sanctions—began quietly and modestly five months ago.

A review of Treasury Department notices reveals that the U.S. government has all but stopped the financial blacklisting of entities and people that help Iran evade international sanctions since the election of its president, Hassan Rouhani, in June.

On Wednesday Obama said in an interview with NBC News the negotiations in Geneva “are not about easing sanctions.” “The negotiations taking place are about how Iran begins to meet its international obligations and provide assurances not just to us but to the entire world,” the president said.

But it has also long been Obama’s strategy to squeeze Iran’s economy until Iran would be willing to trade relief from sanctions for abandoning key elements of its nuclear program.

One way Obama has pressured Iran is through isolating the country’s banks from the global financial sector, the networks that make modern international commerce possible. This in turn has led Iran to seek out front companies and cutouts to conduct routine international business, such as selling its crude oil.

In this cat and mouse game, the Treasury Department in recent years has routinely designated new entities as violators of sanctions, forcing Iran to adjust in turn. In the six weeks prior to the Iranian elections in June, the Treasury Department issued seven notices of designations of sanctions violators that included more than 100 new people, companies, aircraft, and sea vessels.

Since June 14, however, when Rouhani was elected, the Treasury Department has only issued two designation notices that have identified six people and four companies as violating the Iran sanctions.

When an entity is designated as a sanctions violator it can be catastrophic. Banks and other investors almost never take the risk of doing business with the people and companies on a Treasury blacklist because of the potential reputational harm and the prospect they could lose access to U.S. financial markets.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...n-d-tente.html

[bsteadman]

Netanyahu: 'This Is a Bad Deal--a Very, Very Bad Deal'

The Weekly Standard
Daniel Halper
11/8/2013

Excerpt:

A very unusual statement from the Israel prime minister on the eve of a possible nuclear detail between the U.S. and Iran:

"I met Secretary Kerry right before he leaves to Geneva," said Netanyhau. "I reminded him that he said that no deal is better than a bad deal. That the deal that is being discussed in Geneva right now is a bad deal. It’s a very bad deal. Iran is not required to take apart even one centrifuge. But the international community is relieving sanctions on Iran for the first time after many years. Iran gets everything that it wanted at this stage and it pays nothing. And this is when Iran is under severe pressure. I urge Secretary Kerry not to rush to sign, to wait, to reconsider, to get a good deal. But this is a bad deal--a very, very bad deal. It’s the deal of a century for Iran; it’s a very dangerous and bad deal for peace and the international community."

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View the complete article, including videos, at:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/...al_766449.html

[bsteadman]

US, France, Britain: Iran nuclear negotiations have reached an abrupt halt

Jerusalem Post
JPost .com Staff, Reuters
11/9/2013

Excerpt:

France said on Saturday there was no certainty nuclear talks under way with Iran in Geneva would succeed because of major stumbling blocks over an initial proposed text on a deal, and the importance of Israel's security concerns.

"As I speak to you, I cannot say there is any certainty that we can conclude" the talks, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on France Inter radio, noting that France could not accept a "sucker's deal". - (bold, color and underline emphasis added)

Top diplomats from Iran and six world powers are in a third day of negotiations over Iran's nuclear program to try to end a decade-old standoff. The West suspects that Iran is enriching uranium to develop nuclear weapons capability. Tehran denies this.

"The security concerns of Israel and all the countries of the region have to be taken into account," Fabius said.

France has traditionally taken a tougher line on Iran than most other world powers and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has accused it of being more intransigent in talks than the United States.

Among the sticking points, Fabius said, was a call for Iran to halt operations at its Arak research reactor - a potential producer of bomb-grade plutonium - while the negotiating process goes on, as well as questions about Iran's stock of uranium enriched to 20 percent of fissile purity.

Both issues are at the heart of Western concerns that the Islamic Republic is stockpiling enriched uranium not for civilian nuclear power stations, as Tehran says, but rather potential fuel for atomic bombs.

"We are for an agreement, that's clear. But the agreement has got to be serious and credible. The initial text made progress but not enough," Fabius said.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the talks have achieved "very good progress" but important issues remained unresolved and he did not know whether a deal could be clinched by the end of the day.

"We are very conscious of the fact that real momentum has built up in these negotiations and there is now real concentration on these negotiations and so we have to do everything we can to seize the moment," he told reporters.

The talks have deeply upset some of Iran's traditional enemies in the region such as Israel, whose Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said the Jewish state "utterly rejects" a deal.

Meanwhile, Western diplomats say they are disappointed at the progress of nuclear negotiations in Geneva, and expect discussions to continue at least until next week, Los Angeles Times reported on Friday.

Unnamed diplomats from Washington did not tell the Times why the talks had come to a halt, but the paper speculated that the disagreement could be over Iran's construction of a plutonium reactor, a direct path to a nuclear bomb.

Part of the proposed agreement between Iran and the international community is that they would agree not to activate the reactor while an interim deal is in place.
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View the complete article at:

http://www.jpost.com/Iranian-Threat/...pt-halt-331046

[bsteadman]

Why Is France So Tough on Iran?

FrontPage Magazine
Joseph Klein
11/12/2013

Excerpt:

After a couple of days of intensive discussions at the foreign minister level this past weekend, negotiations between Iran and the group known as the P-5 +1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia and China – plus Germany) hit a snag. Even the interim agreement Secretary of State John Kerry had been pushing for as a first good faith, confidence-building step – an exchange of some limited sanctions relief, such as unfreezing certain Iranian assets held in U.S. banks and some easing of trading restrictions, for a partial enrichment freeze – was beyond the negotiators’ reach. Talks are set to resume, albeit at a lower level, in about ten days.

Kerry is now pointing to Iran as the reason for the impasse because the text of the interim arrangement offered to Iran failed to formally recognize Iran’s claim to an inherent right to enrich uranium on its own soil. Nevertheless, Kerry tried to put a happy face on the fact that the parties were at least talking substance rather than posturing. “There’s no question in my mind that we are closer now, as we leave Geneva, than we were when we came, and that with good work and good faith over the course of the next weeks, we can in fact secure our goal,” Kerry said following the resultless talks.

Kerry’s Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, also sounded an optimistic note. “We are all on the same wavelength, and that gives us the impetus to go forward when we meet again,” Zarif said. And perhaps to demonstrate its desire to allay concerns over its nuclear program, Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization reached an agreement in Tehran on Monday with the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to permit expanded inspections of Iran’s nuclear sites.

Rather than be a cause for celebration, however, this IAEA inspection deal itself should raise concerns. It notably fails to include within the scope of the expanded inspections Iran’s Parchin military facility where explosive tests are suspected to have been carried out related to possible nuclear triggers. What is Iran hiding? Its nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, said the pact with IAEA is intended as “a roadmap that clarifies the mutual steps required for resolving the outstanding issues.” At this point, we don’t need doubletalk about drawing up a roadmap. The destination for the IAEA should be clear enough – unfettered international inspection of all Iranian nuclear related facilities.

Israel’s skepticism over Iran’s intentions is well known. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned against any interim or partial deal. “Distrust, dismantle and verify,” he said in his address to the UN General Assembly last September in describing what must be done with respect to Iran’s nuclear program. In more succinct terms, he said on Monday that if there is a final agreement, it must “deny Iran a military nuclear capability.”

The French too have their doubts about Iran’s intentions, based on Iran’s past record of using deception and delay as negotiating tactics. The French are skeptical of the kind of symbolic gestures that Iran has dangled in front of the Europeans in the past, while buying precious time to ramp up its uranium enrichment program. Evidently, the French remember being burned a decade ago by nice-sounding but meaningless promises coming from Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator at the time who just happens to be Iran’s president today – Hassan Rouhani. This time France wants a verifiable commitment from Iran to reduce the purity of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium before France would be comfortable agreeing to any softening of the sanctions. France has also been the most insistent on demanding a complete halt immediately of operations at Iran’s Arak research reactor facility, which could be used to produce bomb-grade plutonium.

Although the French are participating in the current negotiations, they reportedly balked at the prospect of any deal they thought would give Iran too much room to cheat. Talking tough over the weekend while talks with Iran were still underway, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on France Inter radio that France could not accept a “sucker’s deal.” He added that “The security concerns of Israel and all the countries of the region have to be taken into account.”

The French appear to be the only adults in the negotiating room. The Obama administration in particular is so anxious to begin dismantling all of the painful work of implementing the sanctions regime in return for the appearance of bringing Iran around on a diplomatic resolution of its nuclear program that President Obama has already been negotiating with himself and making unilateral concessions to Iran. Going back as far as last summer, he reportedly froze Treasury Department blacklisting of some Iranian individuals and entities associated with Iran’s nuclear program, according to a report last Friday in the Daily Beast. Such unilateral easing of the kind of restrictions that Obama was pressured by Congress to impose in the first place belies John Kerry’s blather on Meet The Press last Sunday that “We are not blind and I don’t think we are stupid.”
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View the complete article at:

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-...tough-on-iran/