Tag Archives: Helga Schmid

EU: Iran talks officially set

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Iran will resume nuclear talks with six world powers on Feb. 26 in Almaty, Kazakhstan, European Union diplomats said Tuesday.

“Helga Schmid, Deputy Secretary General of the European External Action Service, agreed today with Dr Ali Bagheri, Deputy Secretary of the supreme national security council of Iran, that the next round of talks between the E3+3 and Iran on Iran’s nuclear programme will take place in Almaty, Kazakhstan on 26th February,” a spokesperson for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in a statement Tuesday.

Ashton thanked Kazakhstan for agreeing to host the meeting. (A US official noted that “Kazakhstan is a country that had a nuclear weapons program and voluntarily gave it up in the ‘90s,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told journalists Monday.  “So it sets a powerful example.”)

Talks have been on hiatus since last summer, after three rounds of talks failed to narrow agreement on a deal under which Iran would stop its 20% enrichment activities.

Iran notified the IAEA last week that it intends to install as many as 3,000 more advanced IR-2M centrifuges at its enrichment plant at Natanz.

Iran has been giving mixed signals about returning to the negotiating table, as well as whether it would take up an offer for direct talks with the United States.

Iran Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, for his part, expressed optimism on Monday. Continue reading →

Waiting games: Iran, world powers play chicken over talks impasse

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As Iran continues to balk at scheduling new nuclear talks, six world powers are prepared to wait them out.

European diplomats said this week that Iran was giving them the run-around in scheduling a new round of talks.

In the latest salvo in the blame-game over the delay, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council claimed in a statement Friday that it is actually the P5+1 asking to push back the meeting. Deputy EU negotiator Helga Schmid called her Iranian counterpart Ali Bagheri Friday, to ask to delay the meeting ’til February “because the P5+1 isn’t ready,” Iran’s Fars News Agency reported Friday. “Bagheri…asked [the] P5+1 to be committed to the fixed dates in January,” the Iran NSC statement said, implying the six powers were the ones holding up resumed talks.

“Nonsense,” Michael Mann, spokesperson for European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, fired back. “The reason for the hold-up is not the 3+3. We are ready and have been for a long time.”

“We had at least five calls to push for a January 28-29 meeting in Istanbul – they did not accept,” a western diplomatic source told the Back Channel Friday. “Now we offered new dates in February (as Jan. 28 now too late from a logistical point of view) and we hope that they will finally accept so we can leave these games behind and focus on substance.”

Tehran’s procrastination is meant to show that the Western sanctions are not working and they are in no big hurry to get back to talks, Iran expert Trita Parsi wrote at the Huffington Post Thursday. But it may also be driven by Iranian fears that they will be blamed if the meeting fails, over what Iran sees as a paltry offer, he said in an interview Friday.

But the P5+1 is not going to improve the package to reward the Iranians for not coming, diplomats and analysts told the Back Channel, even as Iran is intent on showing the sanctions are not so devastating that they are desperate for a deal.

“In terms of why [the Iranians are] not coming, their objective is to hold out as long as possible, and draw as significant concessions as possible preemptively,” former State Department Iran advisor Suzanne Maloney told the Back Channel in an interview Friday. “And I think they believe their leverage increases so long as they show they are not desperate for a deal.”

The Iranian calculation that delay favors their negotiating leverage is likely mistaken, Maloney said.

For the United States and P5 partners, “you sit and wait them out,” Maloney, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said.

“I don’t think we improve the prospects for a deal by signaling” we’re prepared to sweeten the deal, she added. “They don’t put a lot of credibility in any signals we send, anyhow.”

While Iranian sources have suggested they are trying to press the P5+1 to put discussion of sanctions relief on the agenda for a new meeting, western diplomats say it’s simply “not true at all” that the group has resisted discussing sanctions relief, a  European diplomat told the Back Channel Friday.

Former Obama White House Iran strategist Dennis Ross said he expected Iran would likely show up for talks in February or so.

“They have no prospects of getting an improved deal if they don’t come,” Ross, now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told the Back Channel in an interview Friday. And “they run the risk…that pressure will go up.”

The Iranians “want to show they are in no hurry,  that [the pressure] is not working,” Ross suggested. The Iranian calculus is that the longer the talks impasse drags on, and their program advances, “the pressure builds on us,” Ross said. “They believe we don’t really want to use force. …They are playing a very risky game.”

Iranian delay may also be the result of Iranian interest in seeing if Obama’s new national security team modifies US policy towards Iran, Ross said. Incoming Secretary of State John Kerry “in the past has signaled an interest in talking to them,” Ross said Iranian leaders may be thinking. “’Let the new team get on board.’ The truth is–and the Iranians will discover this as well–this is the same president and he is the one who makes the decisions.”

“I will give diplomacy every opportunity to succeed,” Kerry said at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Thursday. “But no one should mistake our resolve to reduce the nuclear threat. …The president has made it definitive — we will do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

“The Iranians need to understand that there is no other agenda here,” Kerry continued. “If their program is peaceful, they can prove it. That is what we are seeking.”

Maloney agreed Washington doesn’t need to go overboard to correct any Iranian misreading of Obama’s new national security team as being averse to the use of force if diplomacy with Iran fails.

“Ultimately, everyone knows that there’s a real military option,” Maloney said. “Sanctions are bleeding the country dry. … We don’t need to grandstand. We have far more leverage than the Iranians do.”

If and when negotiations resume, however, the United States will have to take a strategic decision “at what point are we prepared to pay to play,” Maloney said. “To put significant sanctions relaxation, even temporary relaxation, on the table.”

(Photo: U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-MA) testifies during his Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing to be secretary of state, on Capitol Hill in Washington, January 24, 2013. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst.)

Iran media: Nuclear talks Jan 28-29

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Catherine Ashton, Vice-President of the EC, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy participates at a meeting of the E3 + 3 on the Iranian nuclear issue.
Iran has tentatively agreed to resume nuclear talks with six world powers on January 28-29, at a location still to be decided, Iranian media reported Wednesday.

However, western negotiators did not confirm the report, saying consultations are ongoing.

“In the context of ongoing consultations to agree on a next round of talks between the E3+3 and Iran, DSG Helga Schmid and Dr. Ali Bagheri spoke on the phone on 14 January,” a spokesperson for European Union foreign policy chief told the Back Channel Wednesday. “Consultations to prepare a next round of talks are ongoing.”

“It is also possible that a final decision on the venue could lead to change in date,” Iran’s Student News Agency (ISNA) said.

Talks have been delayed by Iran haggling over the agenda for the next talks, Al Monitor reported this week. “Iran wants the agenda for a new round of nuclear talks to refer explicitly to sanctions relief and what it views as its right to enrich uranium,” Al Monitor’s Barbara Slavin wrote January 14.

“The E3+3 have repeatedly responded to the points made by Iran and have urged Iran to seriously address the concerns of the international community on the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear programme,” the statement from Ashton’s spokesperson continued.

The lead US envoy to the talks, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, was in the UK earlier this week for meetings with fellow G8 political directors, the State Department said.

Separately, Iran is hosting a senior team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Tehran Wednesday.

In anticipation of resumed nuclear negotiations, seven former Iranian parliamentarians called in an open letter to President Obama, the EU’s Ashton, and Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei this week for direct US-Iran negotiations and for broader concessions from both sides to achieve a compromise.

“At this juncture, we believe transparent and bilateral dialogue between the U.S. and Iranian governments regarding Iran’s nuclear program would be beneficial and effective,” . the seven former Majles members, including Seyed Aliakbar Mousavi, and Fatemeh both now living in the US, wrote.

“We therefore support such a discussion,” their letter continued. “By providing more guarantees in pursuit of a peaceful resolution to the conflict, the talks could create fertile ground for serious discussions on many outstanding and complicated problems between the two nations.”

Iran analysts said the letter is significant because it shows the wide consensus even among Iranian reformists on the terms of a viable compromise.

“The central gravity logically on this issue comes down to this issue: Iran has to be transparent and its rights have to be respected,” Trita Parsi, head of the National Iranian American Council, said.

Update: Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Thursday the parties are still trying to firm up a late January date for talks, but it’s not finalized yet, Reuters reports.

(Photo: Diplomats from the UK, US, France, Germany, Russia, and China met with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and deputy Helga Schmid in Brussels in November. EEAS.)

Nuclear negotiators discuss new talks with Iran

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Negotiators for the P5+1 and Iran have held talks on arranging a new meeting soon.

Helga Schmid, the deputy to European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, spoke by phone with her Iranian counterpart Dr. Ali Bagheri on December 31st, a European diplomat said.

“The two of them are working on the next meeting to happen soon,” a spokesperson for Ashton’s office said Wednesday.

Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, speaking Wednesday in India, also said he welcomed new nuclear talks starting “very soon.”

“We have concluded several rounds of negotiations with the Group. The latest was six months ago in Russia…We hope to soon conduct negotiations with P5+1,” Saeed Jalili, the head of Iran’s national security council, told reporters after a speech in New Delhi Wednesday, Outlook India reported Wednesday.

“The time and venue has not been finalized but we hope it will be done soon,” Jalili continued.

Details on when and where the next round of talks will be held have still not been released, but a meeting is expected this month.

Jalili is on a three-day official visit to India. While there, he is due to meet with Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid, National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon and Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai, the Times of India reported.

Jalili is then scheduled to travel to Afghanistan, Reuters said.

Nuclear negotiators still waiting for Iran RSVP

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The government of Iran has still not gotten back to international negotiators about a prospective date and venue for a new round of nuclear talks with six world powers, a diplomat told the Back Channel Sunday.

“No news,” a spokesperson for the office of European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton told the Back Channel by email Sunday in response to a query.

Ashton’s deputy Helga Schmid held a telephone call with deputy Iran nuclear negotiator Dr. Ali Bagheri on December 12th to propose possible dates and the venue of Istanbul for a new meeting. Although one date proposed was December 20, several western diplomats said their expectation was that a new meeting would not materialize until January.

Meantime, Iran is due to host a senior team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Iran on January 16th.

Amid the uncertainty on when nuclear negotiations will resume, the Obama administration gave a somewhat upbeat assessment to the New York Times last week about Iran’s having held flat its stockpile of higher enriched uranium last summer.

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Iran FM: Iran, world powers seek ‘exit’ from nuclear stalemate

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Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said Monday he is optimistic about upcoming Iran nuclear talks and that both sides seek to move past the current diplomatic impasse.

“Both sides”—Iran and the P5+1—“have concluded that they have to exit the current impasse,” Salehi said in an interview published Monday (Dec 17) by the Iran Student News Agency (ISNA), first reported in English by Reuters.

“Iran wants its legitimate and legal right and no more,” Salehi continued. “They know very well Iran will not give up its legitimate right.”

Iran’s top diplomat said he didn’t know when the next round of talks will be held.

A spokesperson for the office of European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton told Al-Monitor Monday they had no new word from Iran on when they would meet.

Ashton’s deputy Helga Schmid spoke with her Iranian counterpart Dr. Ali Bagheri last week (Dec 12) to propose possible meeting dates as early as this week. But diplomats said they expected a meeting is more likely to materialize in January.

Salehi told ISNA he could not comment on the P5+1 package Iran had received.

Western diplomats have indicated that the proposal has been updated from the “stop, ship and shut” package presented to Iran at a meeting in Baghdad last May, but have provided no details on the changes.

“The package has the same bone structure, but with some slightly different tattoos,” a senior US official was cited by the Washington Post Friday.

“Our assessment is that it is possible that they are ready to make a deal,” the official said. Continue reading →

EU, Iran discuss new nuclear talks

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European Union deputy foreign policy chief Helga Schmid on Wednesday spoke by phone with her Iranian counterpart Ali Bagheri to discuss possible dates and locations for a new round of Iran nuclear talks, a European diplomat told Al-Monitor Wednesday.

It is still unclear if talks will resume before or after the new year, the diplomat said.

“We hope that agreement with Iran can soon be reached on how to continue the talks and make concrete progress towards addressing international concerns and finding a diplomatic solution,” a statement from the office of European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said.

The phone contact to initiate logistical planning for a new meeting comes as the six powers that comprise the P5+1 have been seeking internal consensus on how to update the proposal to present to Iran at the next meeting, Al-Monitor reported this week. Pressure is high to shape and reach a deal that would curb Iran’s higher 20% enrichment work on a short time table, given the size of Iran’s accumulated stockpile of fissile material and the concern that Iran may become even more politically distracted and uncompromising as it heads into its presidential elections in June.

The recent internal consultations have been close-hold, given the desire to maintain and project unity among the six powers, amid different thinking and constraints on what can and should be put forward, and the diplomatic challenge of how to persuade Iran of the sense of urgency to take a deal soon.

“We are deeply engaged in consultations right now with our P-5+1 colleagues, looking to put together a presentation for the Iranians at the next meeting that does make it clear we’re running out of time, we’ve got to get serious, here are issues we are willing to discuss with you, but we expect reciprocity,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Saban Forum November 30th.

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Ahead of new Iran nuclear talks, six powers debate updating package

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Diplomats, stressing no date or location has yet been set, tentatively expect six world powers to hold a new round of nuclear talks with Iran in January.

Part of the hold-up is jammed-up calendars—NATO foreign ministers are meeting in Brussels this week, several dozen countries’ top diplomats are due to meet in Morocco on Syria next week (December 12); the IAEA is due to visit Iran next week (December 13).

But a larger reason for the delay and current sense of uncertainty on when nuclear talks will resume is that the six powers that make up the so-called “P5+1” have still not agreed amongst themselves whether and how to refresh the package presented to Iran at the next meeting, diplomats speaking not for attribution told Al-Monitor in interviews in recent days.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton alluded to intense consultations on the matter last week.

“We are deeply engaged in consultations right now with our P-5+1 colleagues, looking to put together a presentation for the Iranians at the next meeting that does make it clear we’re running out of time, we’ve got to get serious, here are issues we are willing to discuss with you, but we expect reciprocity,” Clinton said at the Saban Forum of US and Israeli diplomats and Middle East experts last week (November 30th).

Britain’s political director Mark Sedwill and some of his team were in Washington last week for consultations with their American counterparts about that and other matters.

Some diplomatic sources thought that the United States and EU3—the UK, France and Germany–were expecting to reach consensus on the matter among themselves by the end of last week, but there were signs that the issue was still being discussed among the six as of Tuesday.

Clinton repeatedly stressed that the United States believes a bilateral conversation between the Americans and Iranians could help advance prospects for a nuclear deal.

“We have, from the very beginning, made it clear to the Iranians we are open to a bilateral discussion,” Clinton, speaking to the same Saban Forum, continued. “So far there has not yet been any meeting of the minds on that. But we remain open. … But we understand that it may take pushing through that obstacle to really get them fully responsive to whatever the P-5+1 offer might be.”

Al-Monitor has previously reported that the Americans were inclined to urge expanding the offer to “more for more”—while the Europeans had not reached consensus on that as of the meeting of P5+1 political directors held in Brussels on November 21st.

The “more for more” offer, as one US source explained it to Al-Monitor last month, would envision updating the “stop, ship, and shut” offer regarding 20% uranium enrichment to get more verifiable limits on the rest of Iran’s nuclear program, in exchange for greater international concessions, including some form of sanctions relief.

“’Refreshing the package’ is the language being used,” Patrick Clawson, an Iran expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Al-Monitor in an interview last week (November 3oth). “Consultations are continuing on how to refresh it.”

“But I am not impressed with” the diplomatic preparations to date, Clawson said. “The conversations are extremely timid.” The argument that there are only a “few windows” before Christmas to hold a meeting struck him as implausible, he said.

However, some diplomatic sources suggested international negotiators may be hoping to use the delay and distractions of the season to hold a couple quiet, technical meetings with the Iranians before the next round of high-level political talks. Such technical talks, held with minimal publicity, could be a way to try to narrow differences ahead of getting to the political directors’ meetings with Iran, where little progress to date has been made.

American and Iranian nuclear experts had “several” conversations at P5+1 “technical” meetings with Iran held in Istanbul July 3rd, diplomats told Al-Monitor, leaving unclear if subsequent conversations or contacts amongst those involved occurred after that date.

A spokesperson told Al-Monitor Tuesday that he had no information about any further contacts between the office of European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton or her deputy Helga Schmid and Tehran.

Meantime, several sources told Al-Monitor they expected the US Iran team to undergo some changes as national security appointments shake out in Obama’s second term. Some sources thought chief US Iran negotiator Wendy Sherman, the Undersecretary of State for Policy, would likely leave when Clinton’s successor gets her or his team in place. Several sources also said State Department arms control envoy Robert J. Einhorn is likely to depart, for a chair waiting for him at the Brookings Institution. White House WMD czar Gary Samore may stay on for now, administration sources suggested.

Despite possible changes in the US Iran negotiating team, “the administration is determined that the transition will not be a problem in moving forward,” Clawson said.

(Photo: Political directors from the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and China met in Brussels November 21st, at a meeting on resuming Iran nuclear talks hosted by European Union foreign policy chief and chief international negotiator Catherine Ashton. Photo posted by the European External Action Service.)

Iran taps diplomat to field US non-official contacts

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In a sign of Iranian interest in streamlining back channel contacts and reducing mixed messages ahead of anticipated, resumed nuclear negotiations next month, Iran was said to appoint a central point of contact for approaches from outside-government Americans, two Iran nuclear experts told Al-Monitor this week.

Mostafa Dolatyar, a career Iranian diplomat who heads the Iranian foreign ministry think tank, the Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS), was tapped by Iran’s leadership to coordinate contacts with American outside-government policy experts, including those with former senior US officials involved unofficially in relaying ideas for shaping a possible nuclear compromise, the analysts told Al-Monitor in interviews this week. The IPIS channel is for coordinating non-official US contacts, which in the absence of formal diplomatic ties, have formed an important, if not unproblematic, part of Iran’s diplomatic scouting and Washington’s and Tehran’s imperfect efforts to understand and influence each others’ policy positions.

The appointment is the result of a desire “on the Iranian side for a more structured approach to dealing with America,” Mark Fitzpatrick, an Iran nuclear expert at the Institute for International and Strategic Studies (IISS) in London, told Al-Monitor in an interview Monday, adding that he now doubts that there are agreed plans for direct US-Iran talks after the elections.

“I was told … that Iran had appointed one person to be the channel for all approaches from the Americans,” specifically for former officials and non-governmental experts, Fitzpatrick continued. “And Iran wants to structure that so that Iran is speaking from one voice.“ Continue reading →

Ashton, Jalili hold ‘constructive’ four-hour dinner meeting

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European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton held a ‘useful and constructive’ four hour dinner meeting with Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili in Istanbul Tuesday, at which he stressed Iran’s interest in continuing negotiations, diplomatic sources told Al-Monitor.

Jalili made clear at the dinner, which stretched from 7:30pm until almost midnight, that the Iranians would like negotiations to continue, diplomats said. Ashton, for her part, would also like to move the process forward, but stressed to the Iranians that it’s time for them to get serious.

Also attending the dinner Tuesday–which was held at the Iranian consulate in Istanbul–were Ashton’s deputy Helga Schmid, Iranian deputy nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri, and Ashton’s chief of staff James Morrison. (Video of Ashton and team arriving at the Iranian consulate here.)

The Iranians avoided the hectoring and litany of complaints that had characterized the strained atmosphere at high level six nation talks with Iran held in Moscow in June. The informal dinner discussion deliberately did not focus, however, on the substantive details of the international dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.

Ashton heads to New York Saturday, where she will hold meetings on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly opening session with senior envoys from the P5+1 negotiating group–the United States, UK, France, Germany, Russia and China–on how to proceed.

It’s not yet clear if the six nations’ foreign ministers will meet as a group or if Ashton will hold some bilateral discussions giving readouts. Russia, for one, hasn’t yet agreed to a foreign minister-level meeting, sources said.

Jalili, speaking to a news conference in Istanbul Wednesday, said he and Ashton had agreed to confer after her discussions with the six powers in New York, Reuters reported.

Beyond the New York discussions, the path going forward is ‘open,’ as one western diplomat put it Wednesday, meaning yet to be agreed among the members of the P5+1. Without greater hope of progress, some capitals, including Washington, had recently opposed holding another round of high-level political director talks with Iran, at least in the near term. (France had also expressed reservations about Ashton holding the dinner meeting with Jalili.)

Ashton was returning to Brussels from Istanbul Wednesday, after meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

(Photo: European Council TV Newsroom.)