Ashton, the foreign policy chief of the European Union, wrote Jalili, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, back on October 21 proposing that talks between Iran and the Big Six countries be resumed.
Jalili waited four months before finally sending a response in February.
The Big Six—China, Russia, Germany, France, Britain and the United States—have now reviewed the letter and found it acceptable. Ashton wrote Jalili last Monday to announce the acceptance.
All that remains is for low-level officials to fix a date and place.
The key to the Big Six acceptance was reportedly the fact that Jalili mentioned nuclear issues as one topic for the talks. At the last meeting of the group in January 2011, Jalili ducked the nuclear topic, which is all the Big Six want to talk about.
Jalili’s reference to the nuclear issue was vague, and some suspect he will try to talk about Russian and American nuclear weapons rather than Iran’s nuclear program. But the Big Six still accepted the outline Jalili presented in his brief letter. Jalili said he was prepared to discuss “various nuclear issues,” but did not cite Iran’s enrichment program specifically.
Iran’s new ambassador to France, Ali Ahani, threw a spike into the works last week. Asked by a reporter if a discussion of Iran’s uranium enrichment would be included in the talks, Ahani gave a succinct response: “No.”
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said he was skeptical that the Islamic Republic was prepared for serious talks with the Big Six and doubted the talks would accomplish much, if anything. “I am a little skeptical,” he said. “I think Iran continues to be two-faced…. That’s why I think we have to continue to be extremely firm on sanctions, which in my view are the best way to prevent a military option that would have unforeseeable consequences.”
President Obama took a wait-and-see attitude. He told a news conference last week, “We will have a pretty good sense fairly quickly [after the talks start] as to how serious they are.” He said Iran needed to agree to steps that would “provide the world with assurances that they are not pursuing a nuclear weapon. And they know how to do that,” chiefly by agreeing to more intrusive inspections by the IAEA in Iran.
Some analysts suspect Obama hopes the talks will be substantive, but will be satisfied if Jalili has nothing new to say, so that the US can use that lack of cooperation to try to nudge Russia and China into a posture more critical of Iran.