How France Scuttled The Iran Deal at the Last Minute
Posted By Colum Lynch, Yochi Dreazen Sunday, November 10, 2013
►http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/11/10/how-france-scuttled-the-iran-deal-last-minute
Mark Dubowitz — the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish think-tank in Washinton — said France was uniquely positioned to spot potential flaws in the agreement because it has an array of officials who have working almost exclusively on nuclear issues for more than a decade and understand both the technical aspects of Iran’s nuclear program and the economic impact of the hard-hitting economic sanctions that have been imposed in response.
“On the Iranian side, you’ve got men who have written books on these issues and forgotten nuclear tricks that many folks on our side haven’t even learned,” he said. “The only comparably level of expertise on our side is the French. The same people work the technical side and the economic side. On the U.S. side, those issues are handled by different people from different departments.”
The French Foreign Ministry, officials say, has a particularly knowledgeable expert on Iran’s nuclear program in Martin Briens, who used to run the department that handled nuclear negotiations with Iran and has an encyclopedic knowledge of the evolution of those talks from their beginning to the present.
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Iran nuclear programme deal in danger of unravelling
Julian Borger in Geneva and Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem / The Guardian, Monday 11 November 2013
►http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/10/iran-nuclear-talks-at-risk
In a bid to contain the danger, the lead US negotiator, Wendy Sherman, flew straight from the talks in Geneva to Israel to reassure Binyamin Netanyahu’s government that the intended deal would not harm his country’s national interests.
The hastily arranged trip represented an acknowledgement of Netanyahu’s power to block a deal through his influence in the US Congress and in Europe. Egged on by the Israelis, the US Senate is poised to pass new sanctions that threaten to derail the talks before they get to their planned next round in 10 days’ time.
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More immediately, Netanyahu demonstrated over the weekend that he could sway the Geneva talks from the inside through his relationship with Paris. It has emerged that after a call from Barack Obama on Friday evening asking him not to oppose the planned Geneva deal, Netanyahu did the opposite. He called British prime minister, David Cameron, Russian president Vladimir Putin, German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president François Hollande, asking them to block it.
Hollande, whose government shared some of Israel’s concerns, agreed. It was French opposition that finally sank the bid to seal a temporary nuclear accord, after three days of intense bargaining, in the early hours of Sunday morning, but Netanyahu was quick to claim credit.
Netanyahu told cabinet colleagues: "I told them that according to the information Israel has, the impending deal is bad and dangerous – not just for us but for them too. I asked them what was the rush and I suggested that they wait and consider the matter seriously.
“The deal at once lifts the pressure of sanctions which have taken years to put in place, and leaves Iran with its nuclear and enrichment capabilities intact. Not one centrifuge is to be dismantled. These are historic decisions. I asked that they wait and I’m pleased they have decided [to do] so.”
