EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in Geneva on Thursday. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Stephen Cook: One by one, the so-called ‘rogue’ states are proactively moving forward on ‘global’ peace.
By Jay Solomon and Laurence Norman. WSJ – November 7, 2013
GENEVA—Iran and world powers expect to announce an initial deal as early as Friday to curb Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for an easing of sanctions, a step that would mark the first breakthrough in a decade to blunt the threat of Tehran developing nuclear weapons.
Secretary of State John Kerry will fly to Geneva on Friday to complete the deal, the State Department said. President Barack Obama described the emerging agreement Thursday in an interview with NBC News, saying that if Iran doesn’t live up to its end, “we can crank that dial back up” on sanctions.
The two sides were jointly preparing a draft agreement ahead of a likely announcement, said Iranian and Western officials, although the plan could still unravel. The White House already faces major opposition both from its allies in the Middle East and members of Congress. Israel, in particular, has been deeply skeptical
“The proposal would allow Iran to retain the capabilities to make nuclear weapons. Israel totally opposes these proposals,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday. “I believe that adopting them is a mistake of historic proportions.”cat
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in Geneva on Thursday. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
The movement is also likely to unsettle U.S. lawmakers, who have been preparing to impose new sanctions against Iran’s oil exports and financial sector. The Obama administration has urged lawmakers to wait, and Sen. Tim Johnson, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said Thursday that no decision would be made until after this week’s talks in Geneva.
Mr. Kerry has been visiting American allies in the Mideast, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, in part to gain their support for the negotiations with Tehran.
U.S. officials view the agreement as the first phase in a broader diplomatic process that aims, over the next six months, to reach a permanent deal on reining in Iran’s nuclear activities.
Iran, under this initial deal, would freeze the most advanced aspects of its nuclear program, including its production of near-weapons-grade fuel, in return for the U.S. and Europe easing some of the crippling financial sanctions they have imposed over the past five years, according to diplomats involved in the process.
The Obama administration is also seeking to constrain the numbers and capacity of the centrifuge machines Iran uses to enrich uranium and to prevent Tehran from commissioning a heavy water nuclear reactor capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium by the end of next year.
Mr. Obama said the agreement is “greatly preferable to us ratcheting up that conflict.” He said the U.S. will provide “very modest” sanctions relief in the initial phase of an agreement but would keep the broader “sanctions architecture” in place as a threat if Tehran doesn’t comply.
“It is possible to reach an understanding for an agreement before we close these negotiations tomorrow evening,” Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif told CNN on Thursday in Geneva. “There is a window of opportunity now that…needs to be seized.”
But American and European officials were extremely cautious about declaring success. In late 2009, then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government agreed in Geneva to ship Tehran’s entire stockpile of enriched uranium to a third country in exchange for economic incentives.
The deal collapsed days later because of opposition from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on all matters of state in Iran, according to American and European officials.
The American delegation in Geneva, led by Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, held an hour of direct talks with Mr. Zarif’s team on Thursday. The sessions were the latest in a rapid series of moves toward detente between Washington and Tehran since Iranian President Hasan Rouhani took office in August. Mr. Rouhani had a 15-minute phone call with Mr. Obama in late September, the first conversation between an American and Iranian president in three decades.
“It was a substantive and serious conversation,” said a senior U.S. official who took part in the meetings.
Iranian and U.S. officials said late Thursday that they were still working to complete the framework for the initial agreement, which rests on both sides offering what the other views as a commensurate concession.
Iranian officials want a significant roll back of the U.S.-led sanctions campaign in return for it freezing parts of its nuclear program. But U.S. negotiators have already said they don’t plan at this stage to unwind the banking and oil sanctions that are causing Iran its greatest financial pain.
Iranian oil exports have been cut in half over the past 18 months, costing Tehran as much as $5 billion in lost revenue per month. Iranian officials have acknowledged they need quick access to some of the country’s foreign-exchange reserves that they are unable to repatriate from banks in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
One idea being explored to help Tehran in the short term is to establish a financial mechanism to help Iran unfreeze as much as $50 billion in oil export revenue that Tehran has been blocked from repatriating from Asian and European banks, The Wall Street Journal has learned.
The mechanism would amount to one-time relief from the banking and oil sanctions, leaving them broadly in place.
The U.S. and its diplomatic allies have also kept on the negotiating table an earlier offer to end a ban on Iran’s precious metals and petrochemical trade in exchange for the nuclear freeze.
“We are in the very sensitive time of the negotiations,” Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said late Thursday.
But in a sign of the growing rapprochement between Washington and Tehran, he casually chatted with Ms. Sherman, the lead U.S. negotiator, in the lobby of a Geneva hotel.
Openhearted Rebellion 