Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Photo: AP
Benjamin Netanyahu accused the West on Wednesday of “giving up” the struggle to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and of being willing to sign a flawed agreement with Tehran.
The Israeli prime minister voiced his alarm as John Kerry, the US secretary of state, prepared to travel to Geneva on Monday.
Mr Kerry’s second visit to Switzerland in a week – ostensibly to address the United Nations Human Rights Council – will coincide with the presence of Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister. This may provide the opportunity for another round of talks on the nuclear question.
After months of diplomacy, America and Iran appear close to an agreement to resolve the confrontation over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Under the possible deal – alleged details of which were passed to Associated Press news agency - Iran would accept restrictions on its nuclear programme for 10 to 15 years, in return for a lifting of sanctions.
But Mr Netanyahu reminded America and its allies of their pledge to prevent Iran from acquiring the ability to make nuclear weapons.
“From the agreement that is forming it appears that they have given up on that commitment and are accepting that Iran will gradually, within a few years, develop capabilities to produce material for many nuclear weapons," said Mr Netanyahu. "They might accept this - but I am not willing to accept this."
The prime minister, who faces re-election on March 17, will address Congress next Tuesday.
By then, Mr Kerry could be holding a new round of talks with his Iranian counterpart. A source said that more negotiations with Iran had been tentatively arranged for next week – but an agreement was not imminent and gaps still remained. An official from the Middle East said: “There has been a general deterioration in the negotiating stance of the West.”
However, Mr Kerry offered a message of reassurance. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he warned against believing reports about a possible agreement. “Anybody running around right now, jumping in to say ‘well, we don’t like the deal,’ or this or that, doesn’t know what the deal is,” he said. “There is no deal yet. And I caution people to wait and see what these negotiations produce.”
Later, Mr Kerry pointed out that Iran would remain bound by the Non-Proliferation Treaty even after the expiry of any agreement imposing extra constraints on its nuclear programme. As such, Iran was “forever forbidden from building a nuclear weapon,” he said.
The White House has denied reports that any deal with Iran would last for only 10 years. US officials had previously said they wanted the agreement to last for a “double-digit” period.
David Albright, the director of the Institute for Science and International Security, which monitors Iran’s nuclear programme, said: “The official position of the US was they were asking for 15 to 20 years, but they play this game of, you know, ‘double digits’, and they don't want to give a precise number. And I think people are too freely interpreting it as ten years.”
The central aim of American negotiators is to ensure that Iran would need at least one year to “break-out” and make enough weapons-grade uranium for one nuclear bomb. This would leave enough time for the US to respond with tougher sanctions and possible military strikes.
But Mark Dubowitz, from the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, said this rationale was mistaken. “The one year break-out assumes that the United States will have sufficient economic leverage to respond adequately to any Iranian violations of the agreement after the deal is signed,” he said.
“In practice, it will be very difficult to snap back sanctions once they have begun to unravel. It took decades to put these sanctions in place, and the notion that we’ll be able to effectively snap them back may be legally possible, but practically impossible.”
Mark Kirk, a Republican senator who has led calls for fresh sanctions against Tehran, said: “A bad nuclear deal with Iran will endanger the security of the United States, Israel and our Arabian Gulf allies. We must protect our children from ever witnessing an Iranian-initiated nuclear war in the Middle East.”
Credit to http://www.telegraph.co.uk
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