by Erez Linn, Shlomo Cesana, Israel Hayom Staff and AP
World powers and Iran reportedly draft document of pace and timing of sanctions relief • PM Benjamin Netanyahu: With each passing day, concessions by world powers to Iran are growing • "This is a bad deal, even worse than the North Korea deal," PM says.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry during the negotiations in Vienna, Friday Photo credit: AP
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"What's coming out of the nuclear talks in Vienna is not a breakthrough, it's a breakdown," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the start of Sunday's cabinet meeting, amidst concerning reports, citing diplomats involved in the matter, that world powers and Iran have drawn up a draft document on the pace and timing of sanctions relief for Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.
"With each passing day, the concessions from the powers to Iran are growing," Netanyahu said. "The emerging deal will pave Iran's path to the production of cores for many atomic bombs. Also, billions of dollars will flow to Iran which it will use to fund its aggression and terror campaign, both in the region and throughout the world. This is a bad deal, worse, in my opinion, than the deal with North Korea, which led to North Korea getting a nuclear arsenal."
Written by technical experts, the sanctions relief document still must be approved by senior officials of the seven nations at the table, including U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and the foreign ministers of the five other countries expected to join Kerry and Zarif in Vienna this weekend for a push to meet a July 7 deadline.
The development indicated the sides were moving closer to a comprehensive accord that would set a decade of restrictions on Iran's nuclear program in exchange for tens of billions of dollars in economic benefits for Iran.
Officials had described sanctions relief as one of the thorniest disagreements between Iran and the United States, which has led the campaign of international pressure against Iran's economy.
The diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly on this past week's confidential negotiations, said the sanctions annex was completed this week by experts from Iran and the six world powers in the negotiations: the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia. They did not provide details of the agreement.
A senior U.S. official did not dispute the diplomats' account but said work remained to be done on Annex II before the issue could be described as finalized. And beyond a political agreement that was still in the draft stage, details also needed to be finalized on tough issues contained in four other appendices.
They include inspection guidelines, rules governing Iran's research and development of advanced nuclear technology and the nuts and bolts of reducing the size and output of Iran's uranium enrichment program.
Israel has been watching the ongoing talks between Iran and world powers with a wary eye. On Saturday, an official from the Prime Minister's Office said the concessions being offered would "pave the way for Iran to get an arsenal of nuclear weapons within a decade -- if it keeps to the deal." If Iran were to violate the terms of the deal, it could get nuclear weapons in even a shorter time period, the official noted.
As part of a final deal, the Obama administration also wants Iran to fully cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency's investigation of allegations that Iran worked secretly on nuclear arms -- something Iran vehemently denies. But chances of progress on that issue appear to be dimming.
IAEA chief Yukiya Amano told reporters on Saturday that "more work will be needed" to advance the probe, in a statement similar to previous ones from his agency, which has struggled for nearly a decade to resolve its concerns.
While saying he could wrap up his investigation by the end of the year, Amano said he needs Iran's cooperation to do so. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said after Thursday's meeting in Tehran with Amano that the agency now understands that the "pointless allegations" are "baseless."
Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have made repeated demands for economic penalties to be lifted shortly after a deal is reached. Washington and its partners have said they'd take action after Iran verifiably complies with restrictions on enrichment and other elements of the nuclear program.
Much of the negotiation on the matter has concerned sequencing, so that both sides can legitimately claim to have gotten their way.
Several other matters related to sanctions also had posed problems.
The Obama administration cannot move too quickly to remove economic penalties because of Congress, which will have a 30-day review period for any agreement during which no sanctions can be waived.
American officials also had been struggling to separate the "nuclear-related" sanctions it is prepared to suspend from those it wishes to keep, including measures designed to counteract Iranian ballistic missile efforts, human rights violations and support for U.S.-designated terrorist organizations.
And to keep pressure on Iran, world powers had been hoping to finalize a system for snapping suspended sanctions back into force if Iran cheats on the accord. Russia has traditionally opposed any plan that would see them lose their U.N. veto power and a senior Russian negotiator said only this week that his government rejected any automatic "snapback" of sanctions.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner for 2016, said on Saturday she remained hopeful the U.S. could reach a "strong verifiable deal" to curb Iran's nuclear weapons program by next week's deadline.
Clinton made the statement at a Fourth of July campaign organizing event at a house party in Glen in northern New Hampshire.
"I'm hoping it's a strong, verifiable deal that will put the lid on Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions," Clinton said. "Even if we are successful, however, Iran's aggressiveness will not end."
As President Barack Obama's secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, Clinton helped set in motion the talks that are nearing completion in Vienna. The proposal has been assailed by Republican presidential candidates who say it does not go far enough to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, setting up a potential foreign policy clash in the election campaign.
Clinton said Iran ramped up its nuclear capabilities during President George W. Bush's two terms, building covert facilities and intimidating its neighbors. "The Bush administration's response through diplomacy was somewhat half-hearted," Clinton said, adding the "only response" was leveling punitive sanctions on Iran.
Once Obama entered the White House, "we inherited an Iranian nuclear weapons program and we had to figure out what we were going to do about it," Clinton said. An agreement, however, would not be a cure-all, she said.
"Just because we get the nuclear deal, if we can get it done, doesn't mean we're going to be able to be breathing a big sigh of relief," Clinton said.
In a speech at Dartmouth University on Friday, Clinton said that even if a deal is reached, "we will still have major problems from Iran."
"They are the world's chief sponsor of terrorism," Clinton said. "They use proxies like Hezbollah to sow discord and to create insurgencies, to destabilize governments. They are taking more and more control of a number of nations in the region and they pose an existential threat to Israel.
"So even if we are successful on the nuclear front, we still are going to have to turn our attention to working with our partners to try to rein in and prevent this continuing Iranian aggressiveness."
Erez Linn, Shlomo Cesana, Israel Hayom Staff and AP
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=26647
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