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Nobel peace prize recommended
for Javad Zarif and John Kerry for historic Iran nuclear deal
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By Vasudevan Sridharan
A leading
Swedish think-tank has recommended the names of Iranian Foreign Minister
Mohammad Javad Zarif and US Secretary of State John Kerry for the Nobel peace
prize in 2016 for the landmark nuclear deal.
Tariq
Rauf, director of the Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Program at the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri), said the top
negotiators deserved the Nobel for their contribution at the marathon talks in
Vienna.
The
final agreement was reached in the Austrian capital following 18 days of
uninterrupted talks ending a 12-year-long impasse between Iran and the Western
world over Tehran's ambitious nuclear programme.
Rauf,
who was the chief of Verification and Security Policy at the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 2002 to 2011, added the Iran deal was the
single-most important multilateral agreement in decades. He likened the accord
to the 1996 Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).
Iran's
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rohani have also
hailed the role of Iranian delegates in finalising the agreement.
Speaking
on television, Rohani said: "Under circumstances where the [Middle East]
region is engulfed in chaos and terrorism, the Islamic Republic of Iran
supports regional countries which are grappling with the scourge of terrorism
and will continue on this path."
"We
were following four objectives in these negotiations. As part of today's
agreement and under this Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, all the four
objectives have been achieved."