Barrage Against Agreement with Iran

Negotiations in Geneva have not failed, but have been postponed. Meanwhile the hardliners on all sides are mobilizing against Obama’s diplomacy.

The gray-faced disappointment of the diplomats, who have struggled to reach an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program over the last weekend in Geneva, was understandable.

The foreign ministers after all came in person, which is normally an unmistakable sign: Now things are getting serious, the experts have arranged the details, the deal is perfect.

Nothing has come of it. On Sunday, the leaders again left empty-handed.

However the negotiations have only been postponed — they have not failed. The mediators will sit down together again next Wednesday. If the talks really were deadlocked, the ministers would not send their political directors back to Geneva.

Also, the reasons for a feasible agreement have not changed.

Iran wants to free itself from sanctions that will paralyze the country. The West is interested in diffusing the most dangerous current conflict and preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and Southwest Asia.

No, it does not lack good reasons — what it is missing is trust. That is also why France’s foreign minister Laurent Fabius has blocked a deal in Geneva: His country wants an agreement, but will not be made a fool of by the Iranians.

Obama’s critics in Congress are pleased about this; they do not want to abolish the sanctions on Iran; they want to tighten them. For instance Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat and chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, accuses his own president of complacency: “We seem to want the deal almost more than the Iranians.”

In Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned of a “monumental mistake” and that Iran is being offered the “deal of the century.”

No wonder that was eventually enough for U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry: “We are not blind, and I don’t think we’re stupid,” he hissed.

It would be fatal if the hardliners on either side were to undo the chance that has opened up with moderate President Hassan Rouhani taking office.

Above all, the current negotiations aim to find an interim solution, a first step. Iran must freeze its nuclear program; in exchange, the West will impose fewer sanctions and America will release some blocked foreign accounts.

So they want to find time to negotiate an extensive agreement in peace. Despite the barrage, until then no trump card would ever be wasted.

It is of course possible to make demands so high that failure is inevitable. How this should serve to bring peace remains the secret of those in Washington and Jerusalem — and in Tehran anyway — who fire against any so cautious compromise.