For the 5+1 talks to work, the U.S. must learn from old mistakes

TEHRAN, April 14 (MNA) -- Tomorrow Iranian negotiators will meet their counterparts from Germany and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council in Istanbul to try to hammer out a deal on Iran’s nuclear program. Negotiations arguably began at the end of March, when according to Tabnak, a website close to Mohsen Rezaii, former commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan reportedly delivered a message from U.S. President Barack Obama to Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei after the two met at the March 25-26 conference on nuclear proliferation in South Korea. Anticipating tomorrow’s talks, Obama’s message reportedly asked Iran to freeze (though not dismantle) its uranium enrichment program, refrain from expanding the Fordo enrichment facility, and to tone down negative rhetoric against the U.S. The U.S. president reportedly praised the Supreme Leader’s Nowruz speech, when Ayatollah Khamenei reaffirmed his fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons, and denied that he was seeking regime change in Iran. Interestingly, Obama said that a positive overture by Iran would serve to counter the hawks that call him soft on Iran, get him reelected, putting him in a stronger position to continue negotiations with Iran. A week later, Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Director Fereydoun Abbasi briefed that the Islamic Republic would be open to eventually stopping enrichment to 20 percent purity, nicely chiming with one of the Unites States’ main aims, but would not abandon uranium enrichment entirely. At around the same time two leaked (planted) stories appeared in U.S. newspapers. The first, in the New York Times, outlined the U.S. demands for the opening round of talks: ending uranium enrichment to 20 percent, removing that uranium from Iran, and shutting down the Fordo plant. The second, in the Washington Post, aimed to intimidate Iran with details of U.S. surveillance capabilities within Iran and to win back some of the much-eroded reputation of the intelligence services after their colossal failings in wrongly identifying weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003. Conspicuously absent was what the U.S. would put on the table in return. Finally, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi wrote in the Washington Post on Thursday that “all sides must assume an honest approach” and reiterated Ayatollah Khamenei’s fatwa forbidding the production, stockpiling, or use of nuclear weapons. “Dialogue must be seen as a process rather than an event. A house can burn to the ground in minutes but takes a long time to build,” he wrote. So, the stage has been set and there is a good deal of harmony between what Iran is prepared to give and what the U.S. wants. But it is vital that U.S. officials do not make the same mistakes they did last time they met with Iranian diplomats: pushing hard and expecting a quick result. In 2009, the U.S. responded to a request from Iran to the International Atomic Energy Agency for fuel plates for the Tehran research reactor, which produces medical radioisotopes for 8,500 cancer patients each year. The ‘fuel-swap’ deal, whereby Iran’s 20 percent enriched uranium would be converted outside the country into fuel plates, fizzled out over a few -- in retrospect, relatively minor -- technical issues. When Iran agreed to a Turkish-Brazilian mediated deal that was almost identical to the deal the Americans had offered, it was ignored by the Americans who were busy putting together “crippling” sanctions to impose upon the Iranian people. Negotiations take time, especially those between two parties with so little love lost. Obama may feel pressure from the hawks in the U.S. Congress (that’s most of them) and the truculent Israeli prime minister and his defense minister, but he needs to convince these critics that negotiations will take time if both sides are to agree. He also needs to heed Iran’s bottom line; going in with demands for zero-enrichment or not offering anything substantive just won’t work. Those who shout that time is running out or talk of “windows of opportunity” to strike Iran before it “develops a bomb” grossly misread the situation. It is abundantly clear that Iran does not have a weapons program to strike against. Despite huge intelligence resources (drones, CIA assets, IAEA CCTV), no proof of a weapons program has emerged. This can be demonstrated by the conclusions of U.S. National Intelligence Estimates and IAEA reports as well as consistent denials from the U.S. military and intelligence communities, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Both sides could have a lot to gain from the talks, but they must be given the time to be done right. Otherwise, the next time Iran and the U.S. or the 5+1 group come to the table, it will be all the harder to find a middle ground. (By Reza Merat)