Never knew Obama starred in so many classic movies.
===
Iran winning, America losing. Obama happy! Israel threatened!
Obama's foreign policies are not incoherent they are just failing and wrong. (See 1 and 1a below.)
Middle East Geopolitical Relationships Simplified - Got It!
===
Abe Foxman, Jewish liberal apologist for decades, even has now begun questioning Obama.
Wonders never cease. (See 3 below.)
===
Iranian defector speaks. (See 4, 4a, 4b and 4c below.)
===
Dick
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1) Fordow and Obama’s Iran March of Folly
As the deadline for the end of the Iran nuclear talks grows closer, the remaining gaps between the positions of the two parties are starting to be closed up. And as everyone expected, Iran is winning on every point. As the Associated Press first reported last night, the United States has now agreed to allow Iran to keep several hundred centrifuges operating at Fordow, the fortified mountainside bunker. In exchange, the Iranians have promised not to use these machines for nuclear work and have agreed to other limitations on their activities. But this is no equal tradeoff. Letting Fordow remain in operation with sophisticated machinery is an open invitation for Iran to cheat and to do so in a place where its operations are virtually invulnerable to attack. Once again, as it has been doing since it began negotiating with Iran in secret in 2013, the Obama administration has traded away a key Western demand in exchange for easily evaded promises. The negotiations have become a march of folly in which the president’s zeal for a deal is watering down an already weak agreement that is a gift to the Islamist regime.
Heading into the final days of talks, Iran knew it was in a strong position vis-à-vis an Obama administration that is desperate for anything that it can call a foreign-policy triumph as the chaos in Iraq, Syria, and now Yemen have rendered the president’s claims about having defeated Islamist terror a sad joke. So it was no surprise that, as I wrote yesterday, they have stood their ground in refusing to open up their military research facilities to United Nations inspections, a stand that makes it impossible for the West to know just how close they are to having the technology to make a useable weapon. Now with Fordow, Iran has managed to manipulate Western negotiators to give in on another matter that fatally undermines any hope that this agreement will do much to prevent the regime from getting a weapon if it chooses to try to evade its commitments.
It should be noted that the reported concession would not allow the Fordow centrifuges to enrich uranium. In so doing, the machines can’t be technically considered nuclear centrifuges. But it wouldn’t take much effort to repurpose them for uranium should Iran ever decide it needed to race to a weapon. Moreover, allowing the centrifuges to remain in place lets Iran continue to work on technology that can be used to develop nuclear weapons.
Additionally, the placement of these machines at Fordow is crucial. The West wanted all nuclear technology taken out of that facility specifically because it is so invulnerable to attack. If the centrifuges were, as can easily be done, repurposed for uranium, what then could anyone do about it once sanctions on Iran were lifted and few in the West were eager to reimpose them or to take any action at all on an issue that we will be reassured is over and done with?
These concessions reflect two key elements of the administration’s negotiating strategy.
The first is that they will clearly do anything to preserve the chance of an agreement. There is no single point, no matter how crucial to the hopes of using a deal to foreclose the possibility of an Iranian bomb that President Obama won’t give up in order to keep Iran at the table. The Iranians know that and have acted accordingly.
Second, the administration’s belief in these compromises is not cynical. The president, Secretary of State Kerry, and the rest of the negotiating team truly believe they can trust Iran to keep its word. Given Iran’s behavior over the last 35 years since the Islamic Revolution, it is hard to believe that anyone would believe such a thing. But President Obama still believes in engagement with Iran and thinks that by allowing it to “get right with the world,” he can usher in a new era of understanding between the United States and the Islamist regime.
That is why it is a mistake to think of the nuclear talks as an end in and of themselves, as those who view their nuclear program as a danger to U.S. security and that of our moderate Arab allies, as well as an existential threat to the State of Israel, necessarily do. For Obama, it is just one piece of a puzzle by which he seeks to create détente with Iran. That is why he will do nothing to risk offending the ayatollahs even if it means agreeing to something that will allow them to get a bomb by easily evading such a deal or even through abiding by it. Appeasement isn’t so much a method for Obama as an end in itself.
That is the only way to understand these latest concessions to Iran and those that will inevitably follow them both before and after a deal is signed in the president’s march of folly.
1a) Iran Keeps Its Nuclear Secrets
Tehran hides its past weaponization work, despite its promises.
With days to go until the deadline for the Iran nuclear talks, the list of the skeptical is growing. The latest addition is the International Atomic Energy Agency, and its misgivings are a reality check on Iran’s willingness to honor its promises.
“Progress has been very limited” on Iran’s promise to come clean about its earlier efforts to develop a nuclear weapon, IAEA head Yukiya Amano said this week. Mr. Amano added that “no more new issues” had been resolved, particularly on Iran’s effort to develop explosives for a nuke.
Supporters of the talks hailed last year’s Iranian-IAEA statement, in which Tehran pledged to fess up to its weaponization work. That statement followed a 2013 agreement setting out a 12-step plan for disclosing the possible military dimensions of a nuclear program Tehran still claims is for civilian use. Tehran would clean the slate about the past, the thinking went, and trust would grow. Now Mr. Amano says Tehran has completed only one of the 12 steps.
Opinion Journal Video
Foundation for Defense of Democracies Executive Director Mark Dubowitz on the Secretary of State’s concessions to Tehran as the nuclear-deal deadline nears.
Western intelligence agencies believe the regime tried to develop a nuclear explosive device beginning in the 1980s. Tehran in subsequent years consolidated its weaponization work in the “AMAD Plan,” led by Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a Ph.D. nuclear scientist and senior member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Mr. Fakhrizadeh’s team procured dual-use technologies, developed detonators and conducted high-explosive experiments until 2003, when the AMAD Plan was halted, according to Western intelligence. The apparent pause came after the 2002 disclosure of two secret nuclear sites—the event that set off the Iranian nuclear crisis—and the subsequent U.S. invasion of Iraq.
But as former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright told us last year, “Fakhrizadeh continued to run the program in the military industry.” The AMAD Plan’s latest iteration is the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, known to the West by its Persian acronym, SPND. Iran has long withheld information about the SPND and its predecessor entities, and it has refused to make Mr. Fakhrizadeh available for IAEA interviews.
Without Iranian disclosure of past illicit activities, including nuclear enrichment and weaponization research, it’s hard to see how the Obama Administration can honor its core pledge to strike a deal that would give the West a one-year warning if Iran decides to build a bomb. As Olli Heinonen, the former Deputy Director-General for Safeguards at the IAEA, told us, “you need to have that baseline. You want to understand what they were doing.” An Iran that has the know-how to rapidly weaponize highly enriched uranium or plutonium may need only months to assemble a bomb.
The Obama Administration is plowing ahead anyway, and the Journal reports it is now prepared to accept a “scaled-back version” of the 2013 agreement. The U.S. may also accept a verification plan that would grant the IAEA access to “some” of the sites that Iran has so far closed to the IAEA. But any verification program that doesn’t give inspectors unfettered and immediate access to any place they want to see does little more than create the illusion of inspections while giving Iran the opportunity to cheat.
The Administration’s red lines on Iran have been as erasable as they were on Syria. But Iran’s inspection stonewall ought to be a deal-breaker, and cause for a sense of the Senate vote as early as next week on the President’s failing diplomacy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2) Kerry Orders State Dept. Review as Hillary Email Flap Grows!
The State Department has ordered an internal audit of its record keeping, officials said Friday, outlining a top-to-bottom look at the agency's practices in the aftermath of revelations that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton used a private email account and server during her tenure.
Kerry's order of a record-keeping audit comes as the Clinton email scandal boiled over with news that the private server used by the former Secretary of State was wiped clean.On Friday, the State Department released a letter that Secretary of State John Kerry sent to the department's inspector general calling for a review and saying it is "critical to preserve a full and complete record of American foreign policy."
However, State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke told reporters on Friday that the review will not be specific to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The audit will include the archiving of emails, along with all requests from congressional inquiries and through the Freedom of Information Act, he said.Clinton, a likely presidential candidate, is facing demands for her own emails, after it was revealed that the did not use a government email account, but rather private emails through a server in her house, and that she has only provided the State Department with copies of her work-related emails later this year.
Rep. Trey Gowdy said Friday, not long after the State Department announce the internal probe, that Clinton had wiped her email server clean and permanently deleting all its emails.
Further, the South Carolina Republican said Clinton has not produced a single new document in recent weeks to answer a subpoena from the committee he chairs that is investigating the Benghazi, Libya terror attacks that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and diplomatic staff in 2012.
Clinton's attorney, David Kendall, said Gowdy was looking in the wrong place. Instead of asking Clinton for the emails, Gowdy should look to the State Department, which is "uniquely positioned to make available any documents responsive to your requests," Kendall said.
Clinton says the emails she's turned over to the State Department are not classified, and state says it will publish the ones she did turn over on a website. The emails that pertain to the Benghazi committee's probe will be released before the other, the State Department reports.
Kendall's letter confirms "what we all knew: that Secretary Clinton already produced her official records to the State Department, that she did not keep her personal emails and that the Select Committee has already obtained her emails relating to the attacks in Benghazi.” Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Benghazi panel, said Friday, according to Time.
"Even small details about who the secretary might have been communicating with, even a happy birthday note written in the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2012, it's important for our investigation to learn all of the details about what all was going on that night," the Kansas Republican told Fox News.
Pompeo further commented that if Clinton were a private citizen, she would never get away with refusing to turn over documents in response to a subpoena.
"Most importantly, a private citizen who used to be the secretary of state...you shouldn't get away with this," he said. "These were, if not classified, often sensitive conversations."
Earlier this month, Pompeo told Fox that the select committee has known about Clinton's private email server since August, but complained the lawmakers were stonewalled by the State Department in getting access to the server or the messages.
Kerry, in his letter on Friday ordering the internal probe, said his department has undertaken significant efforts to promote preservation and transparency, including through better technology and training of staff.
However, that burden is significant, as more than 18,000 FOIA requests arrive each year that puts a "significant strain" on diplomats whose main job is the advancement of U.S. foreign policy. In addition, he said, congressional investigations and requests have "greatly increased."
Kerry did not mention the Clinton controversy directly, but instead said officials are "facing challenges regarding our integration of record-keeping technologies and the use of non-government systems by some department personnel to conduct official business."
He is seeking several recommendations from Inspector General Steve Linick, including suggestions about making improvements across more than 280 diplomatic posts worldwide to ways to streamline efforts to preserve appropriate documents. However, Kerry questions whether the agency has even the resources and tools necessary to meet its obligations.
2) Kerry Orders State Dept. Review as Hillary Email Flap Grows!
The State Department has ordered an internal audit of its record keeping, officials said Friday, outlining a top-to-bottom look at the agency's practices in the aftermath of revelations that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton used a private email account and server during her tenure.
Kerry's order of a record-keeping audit comes as the Clinton email scandal boiled over with news that the private server used by the former Secretary of State was wiped clean.On Friday, the State Department released a letter that Secretary of State John Kerry sent to the department's inspector general calling for a review and saying it is "critical to preserve a full and complete record of American foreign policy."
However, State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke told reporters on Friday that the review will not be specific to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The audit will include the archiving of emails, along with all requests from congressional inquiries and through the Freedom of Information Act, he said.Clinton, a likely presidential candidate, is facing demands for her own emails, after it was revealed that the did not use a government email account, but rather private emails through a server in her house, and that she has only provided the State Department with copies of her work-related emails later this year.
Rep. Trey Gowdy said Friday, not long after the State Department announce the internal probe, that Clinton had wiped her email server clean and permanently deleting all its emails.
Further, the South Carolina Republican said Clinton has not produced a single new document in recent weeks to answer a subpoena from the committee he chairs that is investigating the Benghazi, Libya terror attacks that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and diplomatic staff in 2012.
Clinton's attorney, David Kendall, said Gowdy was looking in the wrong place. Instead of asking Clinton for the emails, Gowdy should look to the State Department, which is "uniquely positioned to make available any documents responsive to your requests," Kendall said.
Clinton says the emails she's turned over to the State Department are not classified, and state says it will publish the ones she did turn over on a website. The emails that pertain to the Benghazi committee's probe will be released before the other, the State Department reports.
Kendall's letter confirms "what we all knew: that Secretary Clinton already produced her official records to the State Department, that she did not keep her personal emails and that the Select Committee has already obtained her emails relating to the attacks in Benghazi.” Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Benghazi panel, said Friday, according to Time.
But all of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails from the time period surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012 Benghazi attacks are vital for the ongoing investigation into the events surrounding that day, Rep. Mike Pompeo, a member of the select committee, said Saturday.
Pompeo further commented that if Clinton were a private citizen, she would never get away with refusing to turn over documents in response to a subpoena.
"Most importantly, a private citizen who used to be the secretary of state...you shouldn't get away with this," he said. "These were, if not classified, often sensitive conversations."
Earlier this month, Pompeo told Fox that the select committee has known about Clinton's private email server since August, but complained the lawmakers were stonewalled by the State Department in getting access to the server or the messages.
Kerry, in his letter on Friday ordering the internal probe, said his department has undertaken significant efforts to promote preservation and transparency, including through better technology and training of staff.
However, that burden is significant, as more than 18,000 FOIA requests arrive each year that puts a "significant strain" on diplomats whose main job is the advancement of U.S. foreign policy. In addition, he said, congressional investigations and requests have "greatly increased."
Kerry did not mention the Clinton controversy directly, but instead said officials are "facing challenges regarding our integration of record-keeping technologies and the use of non-government systems by some department personnel to conduct official business."
He is seeking several recommendations from Inspector General Steve Linick, including suggestions about making improvements across more than 280 diplomatic posts worldwide to ways to streamline efforts to preserve appropriate documents. However, Kerry questions whether the agency has even the resources and tools necessary to meet its obligations.
Earlier this month, The Associated Press sued to gain access to Clinton's correspondence after repeated FOIA requests to the department went unfulfilled. They included one request made five years ago.
An inspector general's report in 2012 criticized the State Department's practices as "inefficient and ineffective," citing a heavy workload, small staff and inter-agency problems.
Kerry asked if outside expertise might be advisable on how best to manage, preserve and make transparent its documents. He asked the inspector general to conduct "an expedited review of these issues."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3)
President Obama’s Intentions
It strikes us as no small thing when Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League comes out with an article questioning President Obama’s intentions. Mr. Foxman, after all, has stood for a liberal view of our common concerns for his entire adult life. He opposed Prime Minister Netanyahu accepting from Congress an invitation that hadn’t been cleared with the White House. He has supported every peace initiative we can remember. He is, in the finest sense, one of the great liberals of his time.
Yet he has come out with a column, which we saw on the daily Algemeiner, declaring that however critical of Mr. Netanyahu he has been in recent months, he is “even more troubled” by the “statements now coming out of the White House calling for a reassessment of policy toward Israel,” including reconsidering of the practice of vetoing anti-Israel measures at the United Nations. He still wants the Israeli premier to do more to solidify relations with America and to stand up to hardliners at home.
“None of this, however, justifies what we are hearing from the Obama Administration,” Mr. Foxman warns. “Their reactions raise deeper questions about their intentions and perspectives.” The ADL chief doesn’t accuse the President or his camarilla of anti-Semitism. But, he writes, “From the beginning of the Obama years, there was a disturbing indifference to the mindset of the Israeli public, characterized by the President’s speech in Cairo and focus on Israeli settlements as the key obstacle to peace.” Writes Mr. Foxman:
“Talk of ‘neither party willing to make sacrifices for peace,’ and even seeming to put the blame on Israel, simply disregarded the brutal reality of what Israelis went through for a decade starting with the Camp David meeting in 2000. There, a left-wing Israeli government, elected by a public hoping against hope that the Palestinians were finally ready to abandon their decades-long struggle against Israel, offered a true two-state solution to the Palestinians. Not only was it rejected, but violence and suicide bombs followed for years.
“After that, Israeli leaders took two more steps toward that vaunted goal of two states: first the gut-wrenching withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, and then the offer by then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2008. Israelis saw these initiatives rejected again, together with Hamas taking over Gaza with its attendant rockets and war. In sum, Israelis saw an unrepentant foe still seemingly committed to irredentist goals.“Nothing much has changed since then on the Palestinian side. Hamas continues to control Gaza and, after another war, is seeking to rearm for the next conflict against Israel. And the Palestinian Authority has found every excuse to avoid negotiations, making it clear to Israelis that Palestinian leaders are far more interested in turning the international community and the U.S. against Israel than to resolving their internal problems and the conflict with Israel. Or put another way, they seemed interested in achieving a Palestinian state only if it meant not having to end the struggle against Israel.”
This kind of talk would be less remarkable — though not a jot less credible — from hardliners like, say, Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America. But coming from a figure like of such liberality as Mr. Foxman, and a man who is retiring from a lifetime of leadership at an organization devoted to fighting the defamation of the Jewish people, it is newsworthy. There aren’t ten Jews in America, we’d warrant, who don’t share Mr. Foxman’s concern about the intentions being signaled by the language the White House is using.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4) Iranian Defector: 'U.S. Negotiating Team Mainly There to Speak on Iran’s Behalf'
4a) U.S. Caves to Key Iranian Demands as Nuke Deal Comes Together
4) Iranian Defector: 'U.S. Negotiating Team Mainly There to Speak on Iran’s Behalf'
By Daniel Halper
An Iranian journalist writing about the nuclear negotiations between the United States and Iran has defected. In an interview Amir Hossein Motaghi, has some harsh words for his native Iran. He also has a damning indictment of America's role in the nuclear negotiations.
“The U.S. negotiating team are mainly there to speak on Iran’s behalf with other members of the 5+1 countries and convince them of a deal," Motaghi told a TV station after just defecting from the Iranian delegation while abroad for the nuclear talks. The P 5 + 1 is made up of United States, United Kingdom, Russia, China, France, plus Germany.
We're in good hands http://t.co/0bw9VksrS1 pic.twitter.com/dmoU4zDTk4— Omri Ceren (@cerenomri) March 28, 2015
"US negotiating team mainly there to speak on Iran’s behalf with other members of the 5+1" http://t.co/sWTjWaEq9x pic.twitter.com/Cd1wrSYXDi— Omri Ceren (@cerenomri) March 28, 2015
The British Telegraph has details of Motaghi's defection:
A close media aide to Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian president, has sought political asylum in Switzerland after travelling to Lausanne to cover the nuclear talks between Tehran and the West.Amir Hossein Motaghi, who managed public relations for Mr Rouhani during his 2013 election campaign, was said by Iranian news agencies to have quit his job at the Iran Student Correspondents Association (ISCA).
He then appeared on an opposition television channel based in London to say he no longer saw any “sense” in his profession as a journalist as he could only write what he was told.
“There are a number of people attending on the Iranian side at the negotiations who are said to be journalists reporting on the negotiations,” he told Irane Farda television. “But they are not journalists and their main job is to make sure that all the news fed back to Iran goes through their channels.
“My conscience would not allow me to carry out my profession in this manner any more.” Mr Mottaghi was a journalist and commentator who went on to use social media successfully to promote Mr Rouhani to a youthful audience that overwhelmingly elected him to power.
4a) U.S. Caves to Key Iranian Demands as Nuke Deal Comes Together
BY: Adam Kredo
LAUSSANE, Switzerland—The Obama administration is giving in to Iranian demands about the scope of its nuclear program as negotiators work to finalize a framework agreement in the coming days, according to sources familiar with the administration’s position in the negotiations.
U.S. negotiators are said to have given up ground on demands that Iran be forced to disclose the full range of its nuclear activities at the outset of a nuclear deal, a concession experts say would gut the verification the Obama administration has vowed would stand as the crux of a deal with Iran.
Until recently, the Obama administration had maintained that it would guarantee oversight on Tehran’s program well into the future, and that it would take the necessary steps to ensure that oversight would be effective. The issue has now emerged as a key sticking point in the talks.
Concern from sources familiar with U.S. concessions in the talks comes amid reports that Iran could be permitted to continue running nuclear centrifuges at an underground site once suspected of housing illicit activities.
This type of concession would allow Iran to continue work related to its nuclear weapons program, even under the eye of international inspectors. If Iran removes inspectors—as it has in the past—it would be left with a nuclear infrastructure immune from a strike by Western forces.
“Once again, in the face of Iran’s intransigence, the U.S. is leading an effort to cave even more toward Iran—this time by whitewashing Tehran’s decades of lying about nuclear weapons work and current lack of cooperation with the [International Atomic Energy Agency],” said one Western source briefed on the talks but who was not permitted to speak on record.
With the White House pressing to finalize a deal, U.S. diplomats have moved further away from their demands that Iran be subjected to oversight over its nuclear infrastructure.
“Instead of ensuring that Iran answers all the outstanding questions about the past and current military dimensions of their nuclear work in order to obtain sanctions relief, the U.S. is now revising down what they need to do,” said the source. “That is a terrible mistake—if we don’t have a baseline to judge their past work, we can’t tell if they are cheating in the future, and if they won’t answer now, before getting rewarded, why would they come clean in the future?”
The United States is now willing to let Iran keep many of its most controversial military sites closed to inspectors until international sanctions pressure has been lifted, according to sources.
This scenario has been criticized by nuclear experts, including David Albright, founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security.
Albright told Congress in November that “a prerequisite for any comprehensive agreement is for the IAEA to know when Iran sought nuclear weapons, how far it got, what types it sought to develop, and how and where it did this work.”
“The IAEA needs a good baseline of Iran’s military nuclear activities, including the manufacturing of equipment for the program and any weaponization related studies, equipment, and locations,” Albright said.
One policy expert familiar with the concessions told the Washington Free Beacon that it would be difficult for the administration to justify greater concessions given the centrality of this issue in the broader debate.
“The Obama administration has gone all-in on the importance of verification,” said the source, who asked for anonymity because the administration has been known to retaliate against critics in the policy community. “But without knowing what the Iranians have it’s impossible for the IAEA to verify that they’ve given it up.”
A lesser emphasis is also being placed on Iran coming clean about its past efforts to build nuclear weapons. The Islamic Republic continues to stall United Nations efforts to determine the extent of its past weapons work, according to theWall Street Journal.
By placing disclosure of Iran’s past military efforts on the back burner, the administration could harm the ability of outside inspectors to take full inventory of Iran’s nuclear know-how, according to sources familiar with the situation.
It also could jeopardize efforts to keep Iran at least one year away from building a bomb, sources said.
On the diplomatic front, greater concessions are fueling fears among U.S. allies that Iran will emerge from the negations as a stronger regional power.
4b) Obama Admin Threatens U.S. Allies for Disagreeing with Iran Nuke Deal
BY: Adam Kredo
LAUSANNE, Switzerland—Efforts by the Obama administration to stem criticism of its diplomacy with Iran have included threats to nations involved in the talks, including U.S. allies, according to Western sources familiar with White House efforts to quell fears it will permit Iran to retain aspects of its nuclear weapons program.
A series of conversations between top American and French officials, including between President Obama and French President Francois Hollande, have seen Americans engage in behavior described as bullying by sources who spoke to theWashington Free Beacon.
The disagreement over France’s cautious position in regard to Iran threatens to erode U.S. relations with Paris, sources said.
Tension between Washington and Paris comes amid frustration by other U.S. allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Israel. The White House responded to this criticism by engaging in public campaigns analysts worry will endanger American interests.
Western policy analysts who spoke to the Free Beacon, including some with close ties to the French political establishment, were dismayed over what they saw as the White House’s willingness to sacrifice its relationship with Paris as talks with Iran reach their final stages.
A recent phone call between Obama and Hollande was reported as tense as the leaders disagreed over the White House’s accommodation of Iranian red lines.
Amid these tensions, U.S. Ambassador to France Jane Hartley met with her French counterpart, Gerard Araud, Monday to discuss a range of issues.
Benjamin Haddad, who has advised senior French political figures on foreign policy issues, said leaders in Paris have not been shy about highlighting disagreements they have with the White House.
“Fance, like other European countries, has negotiated for more than 10 years and endured most of the sanctions’ burden,” said Haddad, a research fellow at the Hudson Institute.
“The French want a deal, but they see no rush and repeat that Iranians need a deal more than we do, and that we shouldn’t fix artificial deadlines that put more pressure on us than Iran.”
One source in Europe close to the ongoing diplomacy said the United States has begun to adopt a “harsh” stance toward its allies in Paris.
“There have been very harsh expressions of displeasure by the Americans toward French officials for raising substantive concerns about key elements of what the White House and State Department negotiators are willing to concede to Iran,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “That is because the clarifications expose just how weak the Americans’ deal is shaping up to be.”
“The meeting between the French ambassador in Washington and the president’s envoy to Paris—not a diplomat but a big fundraiser for his campaigns—comes amid these very harsh words that were spoken privately about the ambassador’s recent comments on the seeming American desperation for a deal, and the tough words that President Obama had for President Hollande in their phone call.”
Strategic differences remain between the United States and its allies over how a final deal should look, the source said. The French remain opposed to a recent range of concessions made by the Obama administration.
“We may agree that denying Iran a nuclear weapon ability is the goal, but apparently the view of what one can leave Iran and assure that is very different,” the source said.
“Clearly these are the differences that must be discussed. I don’t see France suddenly deciding that America is right and French objections to weakness are wrong, nor that silence is preferable to transparency.”
Haddad said the French are hesitant to rush into an agreement.
“The French want a robust deal with clear guarantees on issues like [research and development] and inspections to ensure that Iranians won’t be able to reduce breakout time during the duration of the agreement (also an issue of discussion), or just after thanks to research conducted during the period,” he said. “That is also why they disagreed on lifting sanctions.”
He also said the French “don’t trust Iran and believe an ambiguous deal would lead to regional proliferation.”
Another Western source familiar with the talks said the White House is sacrificing longstanding alliances to cement a contentious deal with Iran before Obama’s term in office ends.
“The President could be hammering out the best deal in the history of diplomacy, and it still wouldn’t be worth sacrificing our alliances with France, Israel, and Saudi Arabia—key partners in Europe, the eastern Mediterranean, and the Gulf,” the source said. “But he’s blowing up our alliances to secure a deal that paves Iran’s way to a bomb.”
A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on the issue.
Meanwhile, talks between the United States and Iran reached a critical juncture Thursday, as Secretary of State John Kerry met with his Iranian counterpoint to hash out differences over key points concerning Iran’s nuclear program.
The sides are hoping to reach a framework agreement by March 31 amid reports that Iran is demanding Saudi Arabia immediately halt airstrikes in Yemen, where Iran-aligned forces are working to bring down the Western-backed government.
The issue could complicate the talks as the United States attempts to balance its regional alliance with Iran in Iraq against competing interests with traditional allies in Saudi Arabia.
U.S. negotiators have reportedly softened their stance in recent days on a range of issues relating to Iran’s continued production of nuclear materials. One of Iran’s nuclear sites in Fordow could continue to operate, according to theAssociated Press.
4c)
Iran and six world powers have reached provisional agreement on key parts of a deal sharply curtailing Tehran’s nuclear program, Western diplomats in talks in Switzerland saidSunday. One of these diplomats said Iran had “more or less” agreed to slash the number of its centrifuge machines by more than two-thirds — to under 6,000 centrifuges — and to ship abroad most of its stockpile of nuclear material to Russia. As negotiators in Lausanne raced to nail down by midnight Tuesday the outlines of a deal, due to be finalized on June 30, the diplomats cautioned, however, that things may change. Members of the American delegation denied that the sides had reached an agreement on a draft, Israel Radio reported. Iranian diplomats also denied that any tentative agreement on these points had been struck, saying that any reports of a specific number of centrifuges and exporting its stockpiles were “journalistic speculation.” “The fact is that we will conserve a substantial number of centrifuges, that no site will be closed, in particular Fordo. These are the basis of the talks,” the Iranian diplomat said. A senior member of the Iranian negotiating team said that the “publication of such information by certain Western media is aimed at creating an atmosphere to disturb the negotiating process.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Sunday against the emerging nuclear deal with Iran, as Iranian and Western officials in Lausanne, Switzerland were rushing to reach a framework agreement by an end-of-month deadline. Netanyahu told ministers that he had spoken with Republican leaders in the US Senate and “conveyed our serious concern regarding the arrangement with Iran at the nuclear talks. This agreement confirms all our fears and exceeds them. “While [world powers] convene to sign this deal, Iran’s proxies in Yemen are conquering large swaths of land in an effort to overtake the Bab al-Mandab straits, so that they can change the balance of power in shipping oil,” he said, referring to recent unrest in Yemen. Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz, a confidant of Netanyahu, said that the deal was “full of holes,” and that he hoped US President Barack Obama would keep to his word that “no deal is better than a bad deal.”
Source: Times of Israel
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
No comments:
Post a Comment