Israeli Officials Talk With French to Try to Influence Iran Nuclear Deal
Version 0 of 1. PARIS — Fearing that the Obama administration may not take what they consider to be a tough enough stand in the next round of negotiations on a nuclear deal with Iran, senior Israeli officials held talks in Paris on Monday with senior members of the French government and will go to London on Tuesday in an attempt to influence the final terms of any agreement. France and Britain are among the six world powers — along with the United States, Russia, China and Germany — that are negotiating with Iran on an accord that would require Tehran to submit to verifiable limitations on its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of United Nations sanctions, as well as separate sets of sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union. Negotiations are scheduled to resume later this week in Lausanne, Switzerland, with negotiators working against a self-imposed deadline of March 31 to reach a preliminary agreement. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet on Thursday with the chief Iranian negotiator, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and some of the foreign ministers from other countries are expected to arrive subsequently. The Israeli intelligence minister, Yuval Steinitz, said in a statement released Monday night that the talks with the French national security adviser, Jacques Audibert, and the French nuclear negotiating team were “serious and profound” and that the Israelis had laid out their reservations about the emerging deal. Mr. Steinitz indicated, however, that the Israelis had no illusions that their flurry of international meetings would stop an accord. In an interview with Reuters in Paris he was quoted as saying, “We think it’s going to be a bad, insufficient deal.” Apparently concerned that the United States negotiators would not reflect all their concerns, the Israeli government wants to “point to specific loopholes and difficulties,” Mr. Steinitz said in the Reuters interview, explaining the purpose of his visit with the French. In his statement, Mr. Steinitz emphasized his country’s concern that there be tighter restrictions on Iran’s right to research and develop more modern centrifuges, which are “far more efficient.” If Iran is permitted to develop such centrifuges, it “would substantially shorten the time to a nuclear breakthrough,” Mr. Steinitz added. The question of what limits should be set on the research and development of new types of centrifuges is one of the major hurdles in the talks. Iran has proposed that restrictions on such work be phased out well before the accord ends. France and Israel fear that without more stringent constraints, Iran would be in a position to immediately begin vastly accelerated production when an accord expires. The “breakthrough” to which Mr. Steinitz referred is the time it takes to enrich the kind of low-enriched uranium used for energy generation into the highly enriched uranium needed for a nuclear weapon. The United States has said that the agreement with Iran should extend to a year the amount of time it would take Iran to produce enough nuclear material for a bomb if it later decided to break the accord. Such provisions should last at least 10 years, American officials say. France, which in the past has taken a tough line on Iran’s nuclear program, would like the deal to last 15 years. While the French have not sought an end to enrichment, as the Israelis have proposed, they, too, have been concerned about having sufficient restrictions on Iran’s development of more advanced centrifuges as well as the timetable for lifting sanctions. France as well as the United States would like to see the sanctions lifted gradually as Iran meets the terms of the agreement, while the Iranians are pushing for all the sanctions to be lifted at once. Some international officials have suggested that the French support tough measures on Iran because of their ties to Iran’s Arab neighbors, who are wary of Tehran’s influence in Iraq and Lebanon. However, it is also the case that France has extensive experience with nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, and it appears that its concerns are based as much on that knowledge as on its Arab-world allegiances. The French Foreign Ministry was close-lipped about Monday’s meetings, saying only that they were “normal bilateral discussions.” Both President François Hollande and the foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, repeated their support on Friday and Saturday for the overall concept of the negotiations in which Iran would be allowed to have a peaceful nuclear energy program but would be prevented from making a bomb in exchange for relief from sanctions. That language suggests that ultimately the French are unlikely to block a deal, although along with the British they might push for tougher measures. There is in any case a strong agreement from all the Western countries involved in the negotiations that Iran needs to make more concessions. In a joint statement on Saturday, Mr. Kerry; Mr. Fabius; the British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond; the German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier; and the European Union foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said, “Now is the time for Iran, in particular, to take difficult decisions.” |