Iran $hut-Down

>> http://uprootedpalestinians.wordpress.com/2013/11/05/nuclear-negotiations-and-americas-moment-of-truth-about-iran/

Nuclear Negotiations and America’s Moment of Truth About Iran<<  November 5, 2013 by michaellee2009 >> As the parties prepare for the next round of P5+1 nuclear talks with Iran, starting on Thursday in Geneva, we are pleased to share our most recent Op Ed, “America’s Moment of Truth About Iran,” published in The Diplomat, see >>here.  As always, we encourage everyone to leave comments on The Diplomat site as well as on this site.  

 

America’s Moment of Truth About Iran<< November 4th, 2013 >>  America’s Iran policy is at a crossroads.  Washington can abandon its counterproductive insistence on Middle Eastern hegemony, negotiate a nuclear deal grounded in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and get serious about working with Tehran to broker a settlement to the Syrian conflict.  In the process, the United States would greatly improve its ability to shape important outcomes there.  Alternatively, America can continue on its present path, leading ultimately to strategic irrelevance in one of the world’s most vital regions—with negative implications for its standing in Asia as well.

 

Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE << France clueless on Iran, By Pepe Escobar

Here is definitive proof - if any was needed - that the Gallic fit-throwing that burned the possibility of an interim Iranian nuclear deal last week in Geneva was completely pointless.

The key "concern" expressed by Israel-firster French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius to derail an interim deal was about the Arak heavy-water reactor.

Well, UN inspectors this week reported that they had detected no new developments in Arak over the three months since August. [1]

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Yukiya Amano, was also in Tehran on Monday, and - unusually for his trademark paperboy role for Washington - had nothing to complain about.

Fabius used the Arak gambit at the last minute in Geneva to derail the talks, provoking the ire of even fellow European diplomats. That was out of pure disinformation; Tehran was already doing what Fabius insisted they were not doing.

A EU diplomat (non-French) confirmed to Asia Times Online that Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had already informed US Secretary of State John Kerry about these euphemistically defined "confidence-building measures". Kerry was fully aware before he landed in Geneva on his way to sign an interim deal.

But guess what: the French were clueless. Kerry did not tell anybody else on the P5+1 table (comprising the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany) because he feared any leaks. This proves once again that this infinitely complex negotiation is really between Washington and Tehran. Russia and China are behaving - so far - as sort of quiet (and wary) observers. Yet Kerry, Francophile that he is, should have know better about Gallic peacock instincts.

Fabius - acting on orders of "popular" (26% and sinking) President Francois Hollande - started to pre-emptively torpedo the negotiations even before Kerry landed in Geneva. Arak was the perfect pretext to shade France's true agenda; to act as an agent of Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and to secure future fat contracts from those paragons of democracy, the Wahhabi-dominated Gulf Counter-revolution Club, aka the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

 THE ROVING EYE <<