From The
Daily Caller
By Reza Kahlili
Iran has thrown
up new roadblocks to reaching a deal with the P5+1 world powers over its
illicit nuclear program.
Three days of negotiations in the fourth round
of Geneva discussions ended Friday in arguments and confrontations when the Iranian
team presented their country’s new “red lines,” diminishing any hope by the
Obama administration to claim victory in its approach to Iran’s nuclear
ambitions, according to reports from Iran.
Hossein Shariatmadari, a former torturer and now managing editor
of the conservative newspaper Keyhan, the mouthpiece of the country’s supreme
leader, in an Op-Ed published Saturday revealed details of the Geneva
negotiations and congratulated the Iranian delegation for its steadfast demand
that the country has a right to pursue nuclear development.
The Obama administration hoped that with
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif showing an
eagerness to solve the nuclear issue and address the West’s concerns, there
would be a possibility for a negotiated solution. An interim agreement penned
last November in Geneva was touted as a “historic nuclear deal.”
Under that agreement, Iran — in return for
billions of dollars in sanctions relief — limited its enrichment activity to
the 5 percent level with a current stockpile of over 10 tons (enough for six
nuclear bombs), converted much of its 20 percent enriched stock to harmless
oxide and agreed to allow more intrusive inspections of its nuclear plants by
the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose inspections were limited to only
agreed-on facilities.
The final draft of the agreement to address
all of Iran’s nuclear facilities and activities, along with its missile
program, was planned to be finalized this July.
“The Obama administration and its allies were
drunken happy after the initial agreement,” said Shariatmadari, who had
previously criticized the Iranian negotiating officials for being soft with
their Western counterparts. “With this delusion, that with the continuation of
negotiations they could wrap up the issue, they had come prepared to Geneva
with their demeaning requests of security ‘breakout’ or preventive measures of
(possible military dimensions). … To present these conditions as their winning
cards on the negotiating table, they could not imagine in their wildest dreams
that this time the Iranian negotiators on the other side of the table … were
aware of the opponents’ tricks.”
The red lines that the Iranian delegation
presented, as stated by Shariatmadari, are:
• The expansion of Iranian nuclear research and development.
• The acceptance of Iran’s need for enrichment
on a level that feeds the need of the country (the country has over 19,000
centrifuges, far more than is needed for peaceful nuclear purposes, and would
like to expand).
• The preservation of the Arak heavy-water
plant (the plant once operational could produce plutonium and serve the ruling
clerics with a second path to nuclear weapons).
• No interference or limitation to the
country’s military and defensive measures (the Islamic regime is under U.N.
sanctions for developing ballistic missiles and it currently holds the largest
missile stockpile in the Middle East with ranges capable of reaching as far as
Europe).
• The removal of all sanctions at once as
opposed to step-by-step relief (the U.N. resolutions and sanctions in place are
the results of efforts by several U.S. administrations and over a decade of
negotiations).
“These (red) lines, which the enemy had never
expected to see, at first caused their disbelief and then their anger to the
level of shouts and arguments,” Shariatmadari wrote. “The opponents thought
that the conditions set by the Iranian delegates were meant to increase
(Iran’s) negotiating power, but when faced with their absolute resolve … they
realized that their dreams were swept away and that the Geneva 4meeting had
failed.”
According to a source within the regime’s
intelligence community, the leadership will not give up its nuclear ambitions,
and the Revolutionary Guards see themselves as the dominating power in the
Middle East and beyond. They believe that the Obama administration will not
engage militarily and that the regime needs to weather the sanctions regime,
which has already cracked due to the initial Geneva agreement.
Reza
Kahlili is a pseudonym
for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and
author of the award winning book “A Time to Betray” (Simon & Schuster,
2010). He serves on the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and
the advisory board of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI).