Netanyahu warns: Israel is not bound by any deal with Iran
Geneva-based nuclear negotiations explore allowing Tehran to pursue low-grade uranium enrichment • Kerry: We won't leave ourselves exposed to a nuclear program • Netanyahu: Israel always reserves the right to defend itself, by itself, against any threat.
Shlomo Cesana, Dan Lavie, David Baron, Yoni Hirsch, Yori Yalon, Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel B. Shapiro
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Photo credit: AP
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks on the phone after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv on Friday
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Photo credit: AP
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, right, speaks with Martin Indyk, special envoy for Palestinian-Israeli negotiations after meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday
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Photo credit: AP
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with U.S. Secretary John Kerry Friday morning and warned, perhaps for the last time before the sanctions on Iran are relaxed, against the likely implications of such a move. Netanyahu expressed his dissatisfaction with the ongoing negotiations between Iran and the West over Tehran's contentious nuclear program, and declared that Israel would not be bound by any agreement struck between Iran and the West.
The meeting took place at Ben-Gurion International Airport, ahead of Kerry's surprise departure to Geneva, where he will meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
"I understand that the Iranians are walking around very satisfied in Geneva -- as well they should be because they got everything and paid nothing," Netanyahu told reporters Friday morning. "Everything they wanted; they wanted relief of sanctions after years of a grueling sanctions regime, they got that. They are paying nothing because they are not reducing in any way their nuclear enrichment capability."
Netanyahu said that "the international community got a bad deal," while Iran "got the deal of the century."
He stressed that "Israel utterly rejects [the deal] and what I am saying is shared by many in the region, whether or not they express that publicly. Israel is not obliged by this agreement and Israel will do everything it needs to do to defend itself and the security of its people."
According to a senior State Department official, Kerry is committed to doing "anything he can" to narrow differences with Iran over its nuclear program
"This is a complex process," the official said. "As a member of the P5+1, he is committed to doing anything he can [to] help narrow these differences." The official said Kerry had decided to break from a Middle East visit to go to Geneva at the invitation of European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
Netanyahu, who met with U.S. congressmen in Jerusalem Thursday, commented on reports suggesting the Geneva talks have yielded a breakthrough.
"If the information about the P5+1's offer to Iran is true," he said, "then this is the deal of the century for Iran, because Iran will not have to give up anything, but it will take the pressure -- which has taken years to create in the form of sanctions -- off. Under the best of circumstances, Iran will suspend enrichment for a few days, but the international sanctions will be deflated."
Netanyahu also addressed the issue during an address before the conference on joint strategic dialogue between the government of Israel and world Jewish communities, held in Jerusalem on Thursday evening.
"Israel understands that there are proposals on the table in Geneva today that would ease the pressure on Iran for concessions that are not concessions at all. This proposal would allow Iran to retain the capabilities to make nuclear weapons. This proposal will allow Iran to preserve its ability to build a nuclear weapon. Israel is completely opposed to these proposals. I believe that adopting them would be a mistake of historic proportions and they should be completely rejected," he said.
"They must be rejected outright. The sanctions regime has brought the Iranian economy to the edge of the abyss and the P5+1 can compel Iran to fully dismantle its nuclear weapons program. This means ending all enrichment and stopping all work on the heavy water plutonium reactor. Anything less will make a peaceful solution less likely. And Israel always reserves the right to defend itself, by itself, against any threat."
International, Intelligence and Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz said, "We oppose any interim agreement because if any of the sanctions are lifted than the entire structure of the sanctions will collapse.
Deal with Iran within reach?
The second round of nuclear negotiations between Iran and the West was launched Wednesday in Geneva, and according to Zarif an agreement was well within reach. "We can conclude [a deal] this week in Geneva, and if that's not the case it's not a disaster, as long as things are moving forward," Zarif told the French daily Le Monde.
Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, who heads the Iranian delegation to the talks, was quoted by The Guardian as saying the six world powers had "accepted the framework of Iran's proposal ... The aim of both sides is to sign the agreement [but] it's too early to say whether a written agreement could be made in the next 48 hours."
According to the Telegraph, the U.S. presented Iran with an offer saying that if it suspends uranium enrichment for six months, the West would mitigate some of the sanctions. The offer mandates that Iran would stop enriching uranium to 20 percent fissile purity -- a level after which further refinement to weapons-grade purity is relatively easy -- but would allow it to pursue low-grade enrichment to a level of 3.5%, which is required to operate civilian nuclear reactors.
According to the American plan, Iran would also have to consent to limiting the number of active centrifuges, decommission its advanced IR-2 centrifuges, and suspend all operations in the plutonium facility in Arak.
Speaking to CNN on Thursday, Zarif negated the latter, saying that Iran would never agree to completely suspend uranium enrichment.
Kerry said Thursday that Tehran would need to prove that its atomic activities were peaceful, and that Washington would not make a "bad deal, that leaves any of our friends or ourselves exposed to a nuclear weapons program."
"We're asking them to step up and provide a complete freeze over where they are today," he said in a joint interview with Israel's Channel 2 television and Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation recorded in Jerusalem on Thursday.
A U.S. official in Geneva told The Washington Post that an Iranian agreement to freeze its program would result in "limited, targeted and reversible" relief on some sanctions for about six months.
On Wednesday, U.S. President Barack Obama said the international community could slightly ease sanctions against Iran in the early stages of negotiating a comprehensive deal on Tehran's atomic program.
"There is the possibility of a phased agreement in which the first phase would be us, you know, halting any advances on their nuclear program ... and putting in place a way where we can provide them some very modest relief, but keeping the sanctions architecture in place," he said in an interview with NBC News.
Also on Thursday, The Wall Street Journal shed some light on the process that led to the September phone call between Obama and Iranian counterpart Hasan Rouhani -- a move which has been lauded as a milestone for American foreign policy.
According to the report, senior National Security Council officials spent months laying the groundwork for the call, "holding a series of secret meetings and telephone calls and convening an assortment of Arab monarchs, Iranian exiles and former U.S. diplomats to clandestinely ferry messages between Washington and Tehran."
Obama had also empowered Puneet Talwar, one of the administration's top Iran specialists to have direct contact with Iranian Foreign Ministry officials, the report said. The meetings reportedly took place in Muscat, the capital of Oman.
The Wall Street Journal further said that the White House reached out to Tehran through other senior Obama aides, including National Security Adviser Susan Rice, who was directed to nurture ties with her Iranian counterpart while she was serving as the U.S. ambassador to the U.N.