Iranian FM: President Rouhani at risk if nuclear talks fails
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has warned the United States that if world powers fail to reach an agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program, President Hassan Rouhani would like meet his political demise and hardliners would come to power as a result.
According to a Reuters report, Western officials believe the warning may just be a negotiating ploy intended to pressure them to agree to a deal more quickly, although they also acknowledged that Rouhani would suffer great political damage if the talks fail.
Zarif noted that Iran’s conservative hardliners, such as the Revolutionary Guards, would likely be empowered by Rouhani’s downfall.
Iran and the international community are unlikely to reach an agreement on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program before the March deadline, however, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Yukiya Amano said Friday.
In an interview with Israel Radio, Amano said that Tehran had so far failed to address several pressing issues surrounding its alleged attempts to develop nuclear weapons.
“We will have to be very careful because we know who we are negotiating with,” Amano said.
Earlier in the day, Amano held a meeting with Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz in Germany to discuss the nuclear issue.
“Israel’s relations with the US are very strong and will remain that way even after the election,” Steinitz said, adding that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “must do everything” to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear threshold state.
Kerry: US hopes to meet March deadline
Secretary of State John Kerry meanwhile stressed to his Iranian counterpart that the US aimed to meet the late March deadline for a deal reining in Iran’s nuclear program.
Kerry “reiterated our desire to move toward a political framework by the end of March,” a senior US official said after the secretary met Zarif for two hours in Munich.
The US top diplomat arrived in southern Germany late Thursday, flying in from Kiev where he met Ukrainian leaders amid a new diplomatic push to end the deadly conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Global powers have been struggling for more than a year to pin down a comprehensive deal to rein in Iran’s suspect nuclear program, after an interim accord was struck in November 2013.
After missing two previous deadlines, the group known as the P5+1 — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States — set a March 31 deadline for a political agreement.
That would be followed by a final deal setting out all the technical points of what would be a complex accord by June 30.
But the atmosphere has been complicated by hardliners both in Iran and the United States, with US lawmakers threatening to impose new sanctions on Iran if the March deadline is missed.
So far, Iran has frozen some of its nuclear enrichment program in return for limited sanctions relief.
“We face a major opportunity in resolving the Iranian nuclear issue. China is ready to enhance communication and cooperation with relevant parties to work for the early conclusion of a just, balanced and comprehensive agreement,” China’s State Councilor Yang Jiechi told the Munich Security Conference.
Kerry and Zarif have met many times over the past months, mostly in European capitals, as they have sought to hammer out a deal. Their political teams have also been negotiating behind the scenes.
Both diplomats were in Germany to take part in the annual security conference that this year will focus on the “collapse of the global order,” and which US Vice President Joe Biden is also attending.
In response to Kerry and Zarif’s latest meeting, a source in Netanyahu’s office warned that there may soon be “a dangerous deal enabling Iran to produce nuclear weapons that would threaten the survival of Israel,” the Jerusalem Post reported.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu believes it is his obligation to speak out about this grave threat to the Jewish state while there is still time to stop a bad deal,” the anonymous source said.
