The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) (3/25/15) headlined: “Israel Spied on Iran Nuclear Talks with the US.” The article goes on to detail the way in which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the confidential information to sabotage the talks, including ‘playing them back to US legislators to undermine US diplomacy’.
The extension of the Iran nuclear negotiations for another four months surprised many in the political elite and the news media. The consensus was that the talks were failing, because as U.S. officials had said repeatedly, Iran was refusing to agree to reduce its enrichment capabilities radically to assure the P5+1 that the nuclear program was solely for peaceful purposes.
TEHRAN, IPS — Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has revealed for the first time that Iran has made a detailed proposal to the P5+1 group of states aimed at ensuring that no stockpile of low-enriched uranium would be available for “breakout” through enrichment to weapons grade levels.
Gareth Porter, a historian and investigative journalist on US foreign and military policy analyst and author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare states: Very contentious issues remain in P5+1-Iran nuclear negotiations.
The big story of 2014 will be Iran. Of course, the big story of the early 21st century will never stop being US-China, but it’s in 2014 that we will know whether a comprehensive accord transcending the Iranian nuclear program is attainable; and in this case the myriad ramifications will affect all that’s in play in the New Great Game in Eurasia, including US-China.
IPS — Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov revealed a crucial detail Thursday about last week’s nuclear talks with Iran in Geneva that explains much more clearly than previous reports why the meeting broke up without agreement.
Lavrov said the United States circulated a draft that had been amended in response to French demands to other members of the six-power P5+1 for approval “literally at the last moment, when we were about to leave Geneva.”
