Geneva Deal on Iran's Nuclear Program.

Despite the best advice of everyone around them Iran appears to have been dazzled by the bright lights of high-level talks and agreed a deal on its nuclear program after 5 days of talks in Geneva, Switzerland. Perhaps one of the things that fooled Iran into this agreement was the claim that it is only an interim deal time-limited to six months. However even a cursory glance of the details reveals that is simply not the case.

Put simply Iran has agreed to freeze all uranium enrichment activity and the operation of its plutonium plant at Arak. It has also agreed to begin destroying its existing uranium enrichment centrifuges and destroy it's stockpiles of more then 5% enriched uranium under international inspections regime.

In return for this commitment from Iran you would have expected major and significant concessions on the comprehensive global sanctions on Iran's oil and banking sectors that are costing Iran roughly USD4bn per month. These sanctions are basically the product of an Obama brain fart and have an extremely negative effect on the region and the global oil market including the largest oil consumer - the US. Unfortunately all Iran's negotiators have managed to secure is lifting of USD1.5bn in sanctions on oil and gold, the return of USD4.5bn of oil revenues that are being withheld from the Iranian government and USD400m in cash aid for Iranian students living abroad. These are all to be paid in a controlled fashion over the course of a year so can be halted in response to Iranian non-compliance. They are of course also significantly less then the USD48bn the sanctions will cost Iran in that time.

So basically Iran simply cannot deliver on what it has promised especially its commitment to destroy already enriched uranium and centrifuges. As a result when Iran comes to the next round of talks in six months they will have a big black mark against them at a time when they really should be challenging the current European Union (EU) led P5+1 model for talks. After all a P3+1 model with observer status granted to the EU would certainly help smooth discussions between the major players.

12:50 on 24/11/13 (UK date).


Edited at around 14:45 on 24/11/13 to add; With Iran dropping a turd of this size into the water it is obviously going to take a little while for the ripples to work their way though.

However the first attempt at a Geneva deal on the weekend on November 9th (9/11/13) was all US led. The intention was to get to Iran to agree to some technical sounding but not particularly meaningful commitments on its nuclear program and receive some small but impressive sounding financial concessions in return. This of course would lock Iran into the EU led P5+1 Framework. Mainly though it would disrupt the the COP19/CMP9 Summit by getting everyone to search for the secret details of the deal and make people demand to know why Iran was allowed a nuclear energy program and money while they were not. Fortunately Iran stood up to the pressure and no such deal was reached.

This latest round of Geneva talks was very much led by Catherine Ashton the British Baroness who also holds the office of the EU's Special Representative for External Affairs. The intention here was to appeal to European anti-American sentiments by being seen to retaliate against John Kerry's effective tricking of Foreign Ministers into attending the last round of talks. It was also meant to appeal to more right-wing elements within the EU by disrupting the COP19/CMP9. With the EU being one of the few to maintain its Kyoto emissions targets this has become a growing source of tension amongst EU member states. Mainly though the purpose of the talks was to give Iran's great regional rival Saudi Arabia access to the talks through the overlap with the COP19/CMP9.

The fact that Iran managed to not only lock themselves into the EU led P5+1 Framework but also agreed to an extremely bad deal was entirely their fault. After all anyone who has followed Iranian nuclear talks knows Iran's negotiators can be extremely hard work because they never seem to have an end game to their plans.

In fact the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's decision to attend this latest round of talks seemed to be an attempt to explain to the Iranians in person that they really needed to stop demanding ministerial level talks on an issue where discretion is the better part of valour. As for Kerry's decision to respond by also attending the talks I honestly don't think there was much of a thought process behind it. However coming on the back of a failed 9 month operation that was intended to put the US back at the centre of global politics the US seems desperate to take any intelligence it could get by increasing the disruption of the COP19/CMP9.

(Originally Posted on 24/11/13)