US and Iran held secret talks on nuclear deal for a year

US and Iran held secret talks on nuclear deal for a year
24 November, 2013 – The National

WASHINGTON – The United States and Iran secretly engaged in a series of high-level, face-to-face talks over the past year, in a high-stakes diplomatic gamble that paved the way for the historic deal sealed early yesterday in Geneva aimed at slowing Tehran’s nuclear programme.

The discussions, held in Oman and elsewhere, were kept hidden even from America’s closest friends, including its negotiating partners and Israel, until two months ago. The secret discussions may explain how the nuclear accord appeared to come together so quickly after years of stalemate and fierce hostility between Iran and the West.

But the secrecy of the talks may also explain some of the tensions between the US and France, which earlier this month balked at a proposed deal, and with Israel, which is furious about the agreement.

President Barack Obama personally authorised the talks as part of his effort – promised in his first inaugural address – to reach out to a country the State Department designates as the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism.

The last four clandestine meetings, held since Iran’s reform-minded President Hassan Rouhani was inaugurated in August, produced much of the agreement later hammered out in negotiations in Geneva among the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China, Germany and Iran, said three senior administration officials.

At the president’s direction, the United States began a tentative outreach shortly after Mr Obama’s inauguration in January 2009. Mr Obama and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, exchanged letters, but the engagement yielded no results.

That outreach was hampered by Iran’s hardline former president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, who was re-elected in a disputed vote in June of that year. The next month, relations seemed at another low when Iran detained three American hikers who had strayed across the Iranian border from Iraq.

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