The New York Times published an embarrassing look at what went on behind the scenes during the long, long months of “nuclear negotiations” with Iran. Apparently, it involved a good deal of Iran shouting at the hapless U.S. team and declaring its demands non-negotiable, while Team Obama threw in one towel after another.
One by one, the roadblocks to a nuclear accord between Iran and the United States had been painstakingly cleared. But as the negotiations went into their third week in the neoclassical Coburg Palace hotel this month, a major dispute lingered over whether a ban on Iran’s ability to purchase conventional weapons and missile technology would remain in place.The American delegation, led by Secretary of State John Kerry, insisted on extending the ban. But Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister and his country’s chief negotiator, was opposed. Backing him were the Russians and Chinese, equal parties in the talks, who saw a lucrative market in selling arms to Tehran.A compromise was struck that fully satisfied neither side: a five-year ban on the sale of conventional weapons and an eight-year ban on ballistic missiles.
The Iranians are still slapping Obama around because they are emboldened, not because they are unsatisfied. They got everything they wanted — there is not a single red line drawn by Obama over the years they did not cross — and now they have more leverage than ever, because they know Obama’s humiliation from letting the deal die would be worse than ever, so they are still announcing highly creative interpretations of key points in the bargain.(READ MORE)
