Iran warns of tough choices ahead for west on nuclear talks

FT.com

Western powers will have to “spend copious amounts of political capital” to get a nuclear deal with Iran done, foreign minister Javad Zarif has warned just hours after landmark talks reopened in Vienna.

Mr Zarif’s remarks come as negotiators from the Islamic republic meet the P5+1, the permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, to begin technical discussions over exactly what a final and comprehensive deal to enforce permanent curbs on Iranian nuclear activities might look like.

Writing in the Financial Times, Mr Zarif said Iran’s newfound policy of engagement with the west, ushered in following the election of centrist Hassan Rouhani as president last year, was “not a means to an end but a national security policy”, underscoring weeks of carefully stage-managed confidence building at home and abroad.

“To be absolutely clear, we are not negotiating for the sake of negotiating, nor in order to gain time,” Mr Zarif writes, before challenging his counterparts to make more compromises.

“[They] will have to make tough choices. They will have to back up rhetoric with action. Some of them will have to spend copious amounts of political capital to remain credible before the international community. Others, who have grown comfortable with the status quo, will have to scramble to reposition themselves.”

Iran and the P5+1 are working to a July deadline to strike a final bargain on sanctions and nuclear activities.

The current discussions follow a temporary accord struck with Iran in Geneva in November, under which limited sanctions relief, worth around $7bn, was granted in exchange for a temporary halt to Iran’s uranium enrichment activities, pausing the country’s advance towards developing the components necessary to assemble a nuclear weapon.

Senior diplomats acknowledge that ground has been broken in relations with Iran, in recent months, though many have been careful to warn of the scale and complexity of the negotiations they face.

Few are optimistic of an easy outcome – not least as pressure ramps up from hardliners on all sides of the negotiations.

“The Iranians need to be able to show that they are making progress. Yes, the Geneva deal has been important, yes it will bring some money, yes it shows sanctions relief is possible but the appetite is going to grow,” says one senior Western diplomat, intimately involved in the talks.

“They still need to continue to deliver and I think that is what is driving the Iranian approach to negotiations . . . they recognise what is happening in Washington. They recognise that Congress won’t hold off forever and they recognise that will be a constraint in how the negotiations work.”

The main question hanging over talks before they opened this week was whether the deteriorating situation in Ukraine – and Russia’s increasing isolation from Europe and America – might spill over into dealings with Iran.

Speaking on Tuesday, Michael Mann, a spokesperson for the EU’s high representative Catherine Ashton, who is leading negotiations for the P5+1, said there was no sign Ukraine dispute was affecting the talks.

A first round of nuclear discussions ended in February with apparent success, having set a timetable and broad framework for negotiations, but since then Iran and the P5+1 have been publicly at odds on exactly what is up for negotiation.

Iran has asserted than any deal will have to concede its future right to enrich its own uranium, while P5+1 powers have insisted everything remains on the table.

“Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” a senior US administration official said last month.