November 15-2013
by Warren L. Nelson
A nuclear agreement which no one thought a week ago could be reached this week and which everyone thought Friday would be signed this week—fell apart at midnight Saturday.
The airwaves have been filled since then with angry remarks and recriminations. But diplomats generally thought that what happened did not matter very much. “They came close, but they didn’t agree, and they are coming back in 10 days to try again,” said one. “No big deal.”
Furthermore, what was at issue was not the final settlement of the nuclear agreement, but merely an interim pact intended to slow Iran’s progress over the next six months while the substantive agreement is being worked on.
Still, said one observer, “If they can’t agree on a deal just to slow Iran’s program for six months, how can they ever make the deal that the Big Six want to tie the program up so tightly that Iran can never make nuclear weapons?”
After the meeting of the Big Six and Iran broke up shortly after midnight Saturday, there was a rush to assign blame. Most of it fell on French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who was accused of making demands no one else could agree to.
In Iran, many people unloaded with vehemence on Fabius, with various Majlis deputies accusing him of being Israel’s agent in the talks and others saying he killed the agreement in order to sell French-made weapons to the Arabs, in addition to a host of other conspiracy theories.
US Secretary of State John Kerry defended Fabius and said the Big Six had agreed on a joint proposal that Iran was unable to accept. He did not blame Iran. He did not criticize it. He merely said the Iranian delegation couldn’t agree to the proposal.
But in Tehran, Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif went into orbit with angry tweets assailing Kerry. He later calmed down, apparently after re-reading what Kerry said and agreed that what happened Saturday night was just a bump in the road.
Combining comments by Kerry, Zarif and Russian diplomats and various news reports, here is what appears to have happened at Geneva.
The Americans tabled a draft on Thursday that Zarif found very appealing. The chief US negotiator, Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, then summoned her boss, Kerry, who flew in from Israel because it appeared something substantive was ready for signature.
With Kerry flying in, his counterparts felt a need to be there too. All but the Chinese foreign minister swiftly appeared.
Once they sat down with the US draft, Fabius objected that it was far too weak. The totality of his objections are not known, but a major point was the US draft was apparently silent on the heavy water reactor being built at Arak to produce plutonium, which can be used to fuel a bomb in place of enriched uranium. Fabius wanted language that would commit Iran to cease or limit work at Arak while the talks were underway.
The Guardian of Britain said the preamble included US language recognizing Iran’s right to enrich, and Fabius wanted that stricken. However, a number of US officials have said Washington would not agree to grant such a right at this juncture, so it is difficult to believe The Guardian was correct on that point.
The Big Six went over Fabius’ concerns and perhaps others and finally came up with a joint proposal that was presented to Iran Saturday night. It is important to note that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov agreed that the new draft was reasonable and signed off on it, along with China, Germany, Britain, the United States and France.
But Zarif objected. He complained later that the Saturday draft was radically different from what he had seen Thursday. But no one has indicated exactly what points he objected to.
But by then, it was too late to do any detailed negotiating and the ministers all had schedules to attend to in the new week. So, they adjourned to allow staff to work on refinements. The meeting did not “collapse” or “fall apart,” as some news reports alleged. It merely adjourned to another day—which was exactly what everyone had expected would happen when the Big Six deputy ministers gathered last Thursday for what was to be two days of talks.
Fabius did not “stonewall” and refuse to sign an agreement, as Majlis Deputy Abdol-Reza Mesri asserted. Fabius made proposals to the other members of the Big Six, which were debated and refined and then agreed to by all the Big Six. But that did not stop many Iranians from unleashing fury at France such as is usually reserved for the United States and Israel. It wasn’t just conservatives furious at France; many dissidents joined in as well.
Back in Washington, American conservatives were also furious, though not at the French, who were being hailed as the saviors of the hour. American conservatives, who normally despise France, were now shouting “Vive la France.”
On Capitol Hill, some members were pushing for additional sanctions to be imposed on Iran—though it wasn’t clear that a majority felt that way. The vast majority of congressmen and senators have been silent on the issue.
The White House cranked up the level of its rhetoric, with spokesman Jay Carney saying those who want more sanctions want to torpedo any agreement with Iran—leaving President Obama with little choice but to go to war to stop an Iranian nuclear bomb. Although politicians in Iran will likely call that a threat against Iran, it was actually intended to make members of Congress think twice about the implications of imposing new sanctions while talks are still underway.
In discussing what happened, Kerry said the Big Six were “unified on Saturday when we presented our proposal to the Iranians. The French signed off on it, we signed off on it, and everybody agreed it was a fair proposal. Iran couldn’t take it at that particular moment; they weren’t able to accept.”
He said when the talks adjourned, “we were very, very close—actually, extremely close.” Kerry told the BBC, “We were separated by four or five different formulations of a particular concept” that the Iranians said required consultations with Tehran. But Kerry said none was so crucial “that I don ‘t think it’s possible to reach an agreement” when negotiations resume November 20 after a break of just 10 days.
He said nothing contemptuous of Iran or even critical; it was just a simple statement of fact. He painted the Iranian diplomats as professionals doing their job.
In Moscow, the official RIA-Novosti news agency added more detail, going back to the first draft that was showed to Iran Thursday. “The draft of the joint document readied by the Americans was agreeable to the Iranians, but as decisions at the negotiations in this format are adopted by consensus, it was unfortunately not possible to come to a final agreement. This was not the fault of the Iranians,” it said without mentioning France.
For his part, Lavrov offered rare praise for Kerry—whom his boss, Vladimir Putin, labeled a “liar” barely two months ago—and insisted the progress toward a negotiated solution with Iran vindicates Russia’s long-held position that diplomacy, not force, is the way to contain the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
“Once again I would like to note the very important role played by the delegation from the United States led by US Secretary of State John Kerry,” Lavrov said.
Zarif was not so kind to Kerry.
“Mr. Secretary, was it Iran that gutted over half of U.S. draft Thursday night? and publicly commented against it Friday morning?” Zarif asked on Twitter.
“No amount of spinning can change what happened within [the Big Six] in Geneva from 6 PM Thursday to 545 PM Saturday. But it can further erode confidence,” he tweeted.
Later he calmed down and wrote in his Facebook page, “Anyway, the decision was made to hold another meeting to settle the remaining problems on November 20.”
Much of the attention over the weekend focused on a comment Fabius made to a French radio station saying he would not sign on to a “fool’s game.” That was taken to mean he had torpedoed what the other members of the Big Six and Iran had agreed to. But that was his dismissal of what he saw as a weak first draft by Washington. He signed on to the revised text. And after the talks adjourned, he told Europe 1 radio, “We are not far from an agreement with the Iranians, but we are not there yet.”