Zarif: We Will Not Meet with the Americans in New York

While Iran’s new president has announced Tehran’s readiness to talk about a win-win proposal and bringing the uranium enrichment issue under international supervision, the country’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has said that there will be no direct talks with the US while visiting New York later this month to attend UN’s annual General Assembly meeting. Zarif also denied a news report by a British-published publication that US President Barak Obama had written to Iranian leaders.

Hassan Rowhani who has described his goal of opening the nuclear stalemate in Iran’s nuclear crisis, announced on Tuesday that he was ready to strike a deal to remove the “concerns of the world” over the issue. In the live televised interview Rowhani said, “The P5+1 Powers have asked us to restart the nuclear talks and I have specified the first step that the authority to talk with the P5+1 in Iran is the foreign ministry. In fact, we have already prepared the groundwork for these talks and are ready for serious talks with the world.”

Rowhani made it clear that he has no intention of ending the country’s nuclear enrichment program but added that enrichment activities would be peaceful and under the supervision of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency.

Currently Tehran enriches uranium to 20 percent purity. The West in its latest round of talks with Tehran has indicated that it is not prepared to accept this level of enrichment by the Islamic republic of Iran but observers speculate that the P5+1 Powers may show flexibility over the 3.5 to 5 percent enrichment under the supervision of IAEA inspectors.

Rowhani has publicly declared that he is pursuing a “win-win” strategy for the parties and has called on world powers to take advantage of the new atmosphere created in Iran after the June presidential elections. He even said that he would like these talks to begin in New York. The UN General Assembly will hold its annual meeting in New York later this month and Iranian leaders have in the past viewed this visit as an opportunity to hold direct talks with US officials.

“Work will begin in New York and the foreign minister will hold talks with his counterparts there and I too will meet with some P5+1 ministers; those who have made requests to meet with me,” Rowhani said.

But American officials are apparently not on Rowhani’s or Zarif’s list of meetings in New York.

Zarif has his own views on this issue as well, particularly since the president’s website posted a brief announcement last week that the nuclear talks dossier has been transferred to the ministry of foreign affairs.

Mardomsalari newspaper, which is close to Iran’s reformers, welcomed this move in an editorial and said it would elevate the level of the talks. “When the representative of a country sits behind the negotiation table international diplomatic norms require that the members of the opposing team be at about the same or equal political level. Until now, the Iranian side has been represented by a representative from the supreme national security council. In other words, those who sat across the Iranian team were also individuals either at the ambassadorial level or affiliated to the national security council of their respected countries, or members of the foreign ministry,” it wrote. The writer of the piece, Samira Farahbakhsh, believes that Zarif has a positive image in the West thus bringing in more optimism to the talks.

But Fars news agency reports that after a cabinet meeting yesterday and in response to a question from one of its reporters who asked Zarif, “Will there be any talks between Iran and the US on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York,” the minister replied, “Such an event has not been planned at all. The US of course is a member of the P5+1 group and has talked to Iranian officials in that context in the past.”

Zarif’s most important meeting in New York will be with the EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton who heads the P5+1 team on the European-US side. Last Friday, Ms Ashton confirmed the NY talks in a telephone exchange with Zarif. It is speculated that the NY meeting may result in agreement to hold the next talks in Tehran.

Another domestic news report yesterday made headlines: the revelation of a letter that is said to have been written and sent by US President Obama to Iranian leaders, which was delivered to Tehran by Sultan Qaboos, the King of Oman who visited Tehran two weeks ago. This news was first published in al-Hayat newspaper, published in London and Tabnak website, belonging to State Expediency Council spokesperson Mohsen Rezai wrote in this regard, “The newspaper (al-Hayat) wrote that after Rowhani was elected president Obama sent him a message and Washington’s willingness to opening “a new chapter” in the relations between the two countries.

It is reported that the letter raises four topics: “US government’s respect for the elections in Iran; readiness to lift some of the economic sanctions against Iran; a positive response by Iran over the current nuclear issues’ and, US readiness to directly talk with Iran.”

The importance of Qaboos’s visit became clear when al-Akhbar newspaper of Beirut quoted its sources in Oman to the effect that the king was carrying a message from the US to Tehran and wanted to return with a message from Iranian leaders to the US. An Iranian newspaper, Khorasan, also wrote that Qaboos has brought forward a proposal to resolve the SWIFT issue (the global financial channel for bank transfers) which currently makes it difficult for international payments to Iran.

After Qaboos left Tehran, Zarif announced that the Sultan had brought a message from Washington and that there was an exchange between officials of the two countries. According to al-Hayat, there is no problem in Iranian and American officials meeting in New York later this month, provided such meetings produce positive results.

According to al-Hayat, US hold on initiating military strikes against Syria is a positive US response in this context because Iran had asked that political channels be allowed to work out this crisis. Zarif tried to portray this news in al-Hayat to be inaccurate.