WASHINGTON - Iran would open its nuclear facilities to international inspectors as part of broad negotiations with the United States that could eventually restore diplomatic relations between the adversaries, and those talks have the backing of the nation’s supreme leader, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said Sunday.
Zarif also said the United States and its allies must end their crippling economic sanctions as part of any deal. The Western-educated Zarif again repeated Tehran’s position that it has no desire for nuclear weapons but has the right to continue a peaceful nuclear program.
“Negotiations are on the table to discuss various aspects of Iran’s enrichment program. Our right to enrich is non-negotiable,” Zarif said during an English-language interview that comes amid a significant shift in U.S.-Iranian relations.
At the same time, Zarif’s deputy tried to calm hard-liners’ fears at home. “We never trust America 100 percent,” Abbas Araghchi was quoted as saying by the semiofficial Fars News Agency, which has close ties to Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard.
And President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, expressed similar skepticism given decades of Iran’s anti-American record.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has declared the use of nuclear weapons against Islamic law, but he has maintained that his nation has the right to develop its uranium program.
However, Khamenei, who is the nation’s ultimate decision-maker, also has given his approval for elected leaders in his country to engage the West over the nuclear program, Zarif said.
That engagement resulted in a phone conversation Friday between Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the first direct contact between the two countries’ leaders in three decades.
The developments are likely to come up when Obama meets today with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who on Sunday was on his way to the United States and has long insisted Iran be blocked from obtaining the capability of obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Netanyahu has laid out four specific conditions Iran must agree to before the U.S. and Europe lift sanctions: halting all uranium enrichment, removing all enriched material, closing the reactor at Fordo near the city of Qom, and stopping plutonium production.
As he boarded his plane in Israel, Netanyahu said he was heading to the United Nations to “tell the truth in the face of the sweet talk and the onslaught of smiles.”
Zarif scoffed at those concerns.
“Well, a smile attack is much better than a lie attack,” Zarif said.
He also said Israeli leaders have been warning that Tehran is months away from having a nuclear weapon since 1991, and those fears have never been realized.
The potential diplomatic thaw after a generation-long freeze is far from certain, and Zarif indicated the process would not be simple. Iran’s top diplomat also said his country is willing to forgive the United States’ history with Iran but will not forget decades of distrust between the two nations.
Nor was the United States rushing to forget Iran’s past anti-American behavior.
“Obviously, we and others in the international community have every reason to be skeptical of that and we need to test it, and any agreement must be fully verifiable and enforceable,” Rice said.
Rice said sanctions would remain in place until the United States and its allies were satisfied Iran was not pursuing nuclear weapons.
Sens. Robert Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat who heads the Foreign Relations Committee, and Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post that they were skeptical of Iran’s overtures. The lawmakers support tougher sanctions and said the recent talks shouldn’t undermine “U.S. resolve to take whatever action is necessary to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear state.”
Former President Bill Clinton, however, said he sees a “greater chance of constructive engagement” with Iran now than in the past. Clinton said in an interview with This Week that the chemical-weapons effort in Syria could be a good dress rehearsal.
In a separate interview, Secretary of State John Kerry said an agreement could come in a matter of months if Iran came to the table in good faith.
“The United States is not going to lift the sanctions until it is clear that a very verifiable, accountable, transparent process is in place, whereby we know exactly what Iran is going to be doing with its program,” he said last week before Obama and Rouhani spoke.
The skepticism went both ways.
“Definitely, a history of high tensions between Tehran and Washington will not go back to normal relations due to a phone call, meeting or negotiation,” said Araghchi.
The U.S. and Iran broke ties after the 1979 Islamic Revolution when mobs stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. A total of 52 hostages were held for 444 days.
Araghchi also reiterated Khamenei’s statements that he is not optimistic about the potential outcome.
A hard-line lawmaker, Hamid Rasaei, criticized the phone call as “breaking the resistance brand” of Iran - a reference to the self-promoted idea that Iran is the anchor for opposition to Israel and Western influence in the region.
He said acceptance of Obama’s phone call by Rouhani was “undignified” and allowed the U.S. to claim that Iran seeks to modify its policies.
Later on Sunday, Rouhani seemed to defend the cautious openings with Washington in comments on his presidential website, saying his “administration is faithful to change in foreign ties, which is a national demand.”
The core of the opposition to Rouhani appears built around supporters of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who once sent a letter to then-President George W. Bush in an attempt to open dialogue. Ahmadinejad apparently was rebuffed by Bush, and the former president later fell from favor with Khamenei after trying to challenge his authority.
Ahmadinejad’s first public comments on the Obama phone call carried a noncommittal tone. “I don’t know, maybe it was the right thing to do,” the conservative Baztab news website reported him as saying Sunday.
The focus now turns to negotiations among foreign ministers and other officials from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany. The group wants Iran to present a more detailed proposal for a path forward before or at the next round of negotiations, scheduled in Geneva on Oct. 15-16.
If Iran complies, the oil-rich nation could see the easing of economic sanctions imposed after years of Iran’s stonewalling inspections and secrecy about its nuclear activities. The West has long insisted on inspections, and Zarif now seems open to them.
“There may have been technical problems. They may have been problems of transparency, and we are prepared to address those problems,” he said.
In other news Sunday, Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security service said it had arrested a Belgian citizen of Iranian origin whom it claims was sent by Iran to spy on Israel under the guise of a windows and roofing salesman.
The agency said the accused spy, identified as Belgian-Iranian businessman Ali Mansouri, had admitted to interrogators that he was recruited by the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force last year and sent to Israel to set up business ties as a front for spying on Israeli and Western targets. For his services, the agency said, Mansouri’s Iranian handlers promised him $1 million.
The agency said Mansouri entered Israel on Sept. 6 with a Belgian passport under the name Alex Mans, and that it arrested him five days later at Israel’s international airport as he was to board a flight to Europe. He was found with photos of sites throughout Israel “that interest Iranian intelligence,” including the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, the agency said.
Public defense lawyers representing the suspect said he is a Belgian businessman who is not motivated by any pro-Iranian agenda, the Jerusalem Post reported, citing attorneys Michael Orkavi and Anat Yaari. They said the suspect was denied access to a lawyer for nine days and that the case is more complex than the way it has been presented by Israel.
There was no official Iranian comment on the spy, but Iranian state TV called the arrest an attempt at “anti-Iranian propaganda” by Israel before Netanyahu’s meeting with Obama.
Zarif spoke Sunday on ABC’s This Week. Rice spoke to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS. Kerry was interviewed on CBS’ 60 Minutes.
Information for this article was contribued by Philip Elliott, Nasser Karimi and Daniel Estrin of The Associated Press; and by Jesse Hamilton, Jeff Kearns, Ladane Nasseri, Calev Ben-David, Gwen Ackerman and Jonathan Ferziger of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/30/2013