The world powers negotiating with Iran have not decided how – or even whether –
negotiations that began in April should continue, US Ambassador Dan Shapiro said
Thursday.
Shapiro, speaking to Israel Radio’s Arabic department during a
tour of Netanya, said US President Barack Obama was committed to preventing Iran
from getting nuclear arms.
“We are working together with Israel and many
partners in the international community to put pressure on Iran,” said Shapiro,
speaking in Hebrew. “There are very tough sanctions, and there are also the
negotiations with the P5+1. We have not yet decided with our partners how to
continue the negotiations, or if to continue the negotiations, but we are in
full coordination with Israel and other partners.”
Low-level talks
between Iran and an EU official were held this week in Istanbul, and another
meeting is expected in the coming days between EU foreign policy chief Catherine
Ashton, representing the P5+1 – the US, China, Russia, France, Britain and
Germany – and Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.
This
high-level coordination between Israel and the US on the matter is expected to
continue next week with the arrival for talks of Defense Secretary Leon
Panetta.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak, speaking Wednesday at the National
Defense College, of the coordination with the US, said that there was
“continuous, intimate and open dialogue with the US administration – even if we
don’t always agree.”
Barak admitted to differences with the US regarding
Iran that had to with the “paces of our ticking clocks, the differences in
capabilities, as well as other power discrepancies.”
These differences,
he said, meant that each country had “its own particular conclusions and points
of view...sometimes they are different.”
At the same time, he
said, the US understood that Israel alone had ultimate responsibility for
decisions affecting its security.
Barak made clear that he did not think
that either the stepped-up sanctions or diplomacy currently being pursued would
be enough to stop Iran.
“The Iranians are determined to continue
deceiving the entire world, in order to achieve nuclear weapons.
Whoever
wants proof, just needs to look at the talks over the last few months,” he said.
“The Iranian nuclear program presents a challenge to Israel, a unique challenge,
with the potential to develop into an existential threat. We have no responsible
way of ignoring this.”
During that speech Barak indicated that the price
of militarily stopping Iran now would be much less than the price of stopping
Tehran after it gets a nuclear weapon. He also said that one of the lessons
Israel needed to draw from the world’s inability to act to stop the butchery in
Syria was that the international community cannot always “mobilize political
will, unity of purpose, or ability to function – even when the situation demands
it.”