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Iranian Negotiations Set for Brussels Next Week
Top Iranian nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani is scheduled to travel to Brussels on Monday for talks on Iran’s nuclear program with French, German and British foreign ministers, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Dec. 8). “The aim of this trip to the headquarters of the European Union is to start negotiations on implementing the Paris accord,” Ali Agha Mohammadi of Iran’s National Security Council told AFP, referring to the uranium enrichment activities suspension deal negotiated between Iran and the European powers last month leading up to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Board of Governors meeting (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Dec. 8). Iran secretly approached the United States last year in hopes of negotiating an agreement on its nuclear program, Gary Samore of London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies said Tuesday in a lecture in Abu Dhabi. “After the Iraq war, Iran felt vulnerable to U.S. pressure and secretly approached Washington to negotiate an agreement on the nuclear issue. However, this happened after the May 2003 al-Qaeda bombings in Riyadh, which Washington traced to senior al-Qaeda officials residing in Iran. Tehran’s overtures were spurned,” said Samore, according to the Khaleej Times. It remains to be seen what will happen with next week’s Iran-EU negotiations, Samore added. “On the one hand, Iran would clearly prefer to complete its enrichment program, which would give it a nuclear weapons capability within a few years. As a result, Tehran will resist European efforts to obtain a permanent cessation of its fuel-cycle program in exchange for various political and economic inducements. On the other hand, Tehran has been reluctant to risk a confrontation with the great powers, all of whom prefer to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. As a result, it has been willing to cooperate with the IAEA and ‘temporarily’ suspend its enrichment program in order to avoid referral to the Security Council,” he said. “A key factor in the ultimate success or failure of the EU-3/Iran talks will be whether the U.S. is prepared to endorse and support an agreement,” Samore added (Muawia Ibrahim, Khaleej Times, Dec. 9).
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