After the talks, Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief who chaired the meeting, made that clear. “These preconditions are not the way to proceed,” she told reporters.
Western sources said Iran never backed off those preconditions and the talks quickly bogged down. They ended Saturday without even setting a date for more talks. It remained uncertain whether there would be more talks, although neither Iran nor the Big Six were shutting the door.
Iran’s chief negotiator, Saeed Jalili, gave a lengthy news conference after the talks that was beamed back to Iran live. Jalili gave obtuse explanations for what happened at the talks, but did not contradict the Western explanation that Iran blocked the talks with his preconditions.
Jalili’s intentional obtuseness was made clearest in his response to a question asking if any decision was made on the time or place for further talks. The honest answer to that question was “No,” or, diplomatically, “Not yet,” but here is Jalili’s full response:
“We raised these issues. As I said, what we discussed in Geneva was that we should be prepared. We agreed to hold talks on common points and ways of forming cooperation. Mrs. Ashton said we had to find common points. We hope they attend future meetings having found these common points. We are always ready to continue talks on the premises I mentioned.”
Most of the statements in his 40-minute news conference were worded similarly.
The New York Times reported Tuesday that the clearest thing to come out of the meeting was a rejection by Iran of any more negotiations on a fuel swap for the small Tehran Nuclear Reactor. It quoted an unnamed Western diplomat as saying Jalili stated explicitly that Iran was “no longer interested” in talks about fuel. Jalili indicated the Islamic Republic was now prepared to make its own enriched fuel and fuel plates for the Tehran reactor.
A number of analysts said the fuel swap had been the only pressing issue given that the Tehran reactor is expected to run out of fuel this year. With that off the table, they said there did not appear to be anything pushing for another meeting in the near future.
US officials came out of the two days of meetings in Istanbul speaking happily about how the Big Six powers—China, Russia, Germany, France, Britain and the United States—had hung together and not bent to anything Iran called for. That was the constant American refrain.
The Washington Post was unimpressed. It editorialized Tuesday, “Since Iran made no effort to negotiate, this was hardly a significant achievement.”
The editorial then took a surprising turn and asked whether talks were worth the effort—questioning a process it has long supported. The Post complained that the emphasis on talks had led the Obama Administration to play down human rights and democracy issues.
“Jalili’s behavior in Istanbul suggests that the regime remains more concerned about appearing weak to its domestic opposition than about the consequences of defying the Security Council,” the Post wrote.
“By doing more to support the Iranian opposition, the United States could press the regime where it actually feels threatened. It could also send an important message to Iranians: the international coalition seeks not to punish them but to weaken the government they despise.”
Like the Post, many analysts were calling for a new assessment of Iran policy and posing the question: Where do we go from here?
Many analyses spoke of the possibility of new sanctions on Iran. Many news accounts quoted US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as saying in an ABC interview that the Obama Administration might propose new sanctions on Iran. But that was not at all what Clinton said. She was being asked about Chinese firms selling materials to Iran’s nuclear program and she said Washington was considering sanctions, meaning sanctions on those Chinese companies.
The Turkish daily Milliyet said the talks stalled from the get-go and that Ashton quickly telephoned Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to come in and help. It said Jalili even disappeared for two hours at one point, complaining of a “headache.” Milliyet said Davutoglu met with Jalili seven times over the space of the two-day meeting. Milliyet did not report what Davutoglu’s reaction was to Jalili’s behavior. The article appeared chiefly to portray Davutoglu as the indispensable man, and the information Milliyet used may have come from Davutoglu himself.
Western diplomats were careful never to say the talks had collapsed or broken down. The common description was that the outcome of the talks was a “disappointment.”
According to diplomats, Jalili repeatedly emphasized that Iran has the right under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium and to build an entire fuel cycle from mining through enriching to fuel fabrication. He based that on the fact that the NPT places no restrictions on the fuel cycle. In fact, it is completely silent on that topic, a fact that many around the world view as an immense hole in the NPT.
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said a few years ago that the Islamic Republic, by its conduct and evasiveness, had “forfeited” the right to enrich by violating its duties under the NPT to notify the IAEA about its programs. The IAEA voted years ago that Iran had committed 16 violations of its responsibilities.
Jalili met privately with a number of the other delegates, but not with the American, Under Secretary of State William J. Burns. Several Europeans reportedly urged Jalili to meet with Burns, but American officials said they never expected Jalili would meet with them because they calculated it would be too politically dangerous for him to do so.