Channel 10 reports Obama team has been negotiating terms with Tehran, didn’t fully coordinate with Israel, intended to present a fait accompli in Geneva
November 17, 2013, 10:38 pm
Updated: November 18, 2013, 2:07 am
Iran's nuclear head Ali Akbar Salehi (photo credit: CC BY-Parmida76, Flickr)
The Geneva negotiations between
the so-called P5+1 powers and Iran are a mere “facade,” because the
terms of a deal on Iran’s nuclear program have been negotiated in talks
between a top adviser to President Barack Obama and a leading Iranian
nuclear official that have continued in secret for more than a year,
Israeli television reported Sunday.
Despite
ostensible full coordination between the US and Israel over strategies
for thwarting Iran’s nuclear weapons drive, the administration did not
keep Israel fully informed on those talks, Channel 10 news reported, but
Jerusalem nonetheless has a pretty clear picture of what has been going
on in the secret channel.
The report, which relied on unnamed senior Israeli officials, said the US
team to the secret talks was led by Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett. Her
primary interlocutor, the report said, was the head of the Atomic Energy
Organization of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi. The talks have been taking
place in various Gulf states.
In the course of the talks, the report said,
the Americans offered the Iranians a series of “confidence-building
measures,” which underlined American readiness to conclude a deal and
undercut sanctions pressure.
It was the deal discussed in these secret
talks, the report said, that the Americans then brought to Geneva
earlier this month, where it was largely adopted by the P5+1 nations —
the US, Britain, France, Russia, China, plus Germany.
France has indicated that it raised objections
to the proposed terms, while US Secretary of State John Kerry said the
deal was so “tough” that the Iranians had to return to Tehran to take a
decision on whether to sign it. The Geneva talks are set to resume on
Wednesday.
Valerie Jarrett, an adviser to US President Barack Obama (photo credit: public domain via Wikipedia)
According to
Channel 10, the secret channel marginalized Kerry, and was overseen by
the president. The idea had been for Kerry merely to fly to Geneva, as
he did last Friday, to sign a deal in which he had been a bit player. In
the event, factors such as the French stance, and Israel’s very public
objections, derailed this plan, and the talks broke up last Saturday
without an agreement.
Israel’s
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly fumed at the terms that
were offered to Iran at Geneva, including an easing of non-core
sanctions under an arrangements whereby Iran would still be permitted to
enrich uranium to 3.5%. Netanyahu wants all sanctions retained, and all
enrichment to be frozen, as a first step toward the dismantling of
Iran’s entire “military nuclear” program.
Nevertheless,
the expectation in Jerusalem is that a deal is on the way in the near
future. Kerry, with whom Netanyahu has been engaged in a public sniping
match in recent days, is due back in Israel at the end of this week,
after the Geneva talks resume.
Sunday’s Channel 10 report was not the first
to assert a secret US-Iran channel involving Obama aide Jarrett. In
November of 2012, the daily Yedioth
Ahronoth said Jarrett — a Chicago lawyer born in Shiraz, Iran, to
American parents, and good friend of Obama’s — was “a key figure in secret contacts the White House is conducting with the Iranian regime.”
That report said “Jarrett
served as the personal and direct emissary of the president to secret
meetings with the Iranians, which are understood to have taken place in
one of the Gulf principalities.”
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