Javad Zarif on Iran’s Nuclear Negotiations
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on May 21st, 2014 11:08 pm by HL
Javad Zarif on Iran’s Nuclear Negotiations
I first met Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, in the nineteen-eighties, when he was a junior member of the Iranian delegation at the United Nations. This week’s issue of The New Yorker includes a Profile based on twenty-five years of conversations with him, including four in Tehran and New York since last September. Zarif is now the pivotal broker in nuclear talks between his government and six world powers—Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States. After eight months of diplomacy, the serious drafting of terms for a long-term deal to insure that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon began last week, in Vienna. The deadline for reaching an agreement is July 20th.
A nuclear deal would almost certainly affect Iran’s political future. “If we can ascertain and show to our people that the West is ready to deal with Iran on the basis of mutual respect and mutual interests and equal footing, then it will have an impact on almost every aspect of Iran’s foreign policy behavior—and some aspects of Iran’s domestic policy,” Zarif said.
