Iran’s ‘diplomat sheikh’ brings new tone to nuclear talks: article

TEHRAN,June 23(MNA) – Iran’s new president Hassan Rohani is able to bring a new tone to nuclear talks given his flexible approach, the Christian Science Monitor wrote in an article published on Friday. Following are excerpts of the text of the article: Despite Hassan Rohani’s impressive revolutionary pedigree, it is his quarter-century of involvement with Iran’s nuclear program that will most interest the U.S. and Israel. As the top nuclear negotiator from 2003-05, Mr. Rohani oversaw the only nuclear deal in which Iran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment, earning him the nickname “diplomat sheikh” and impressing his European counterparts as a smart and able negotiator. Rohani “is naturally courteous, respectful, and engaged. He’s straightforward and pragmatic to deal with – but intensively protective of Iran, its people, and of the Islamic revolution,” former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw wrote this week in The Telegraph. Mr. Straw recalled a moment in October 2003, when he and the German and French foreign ministers traveled to Iran to forge a nuclear deal. They were about to leave without it. “We then watched as [Rohani] worked the phones to the president [reformist Mohammad Khatami], and, crucially, to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, to gain greater freedom of maneuver. It showed impressive flexibility. After a round of tough negotiations, we got a deal: the Tehran Declaration,” Straw wrote. That nuclear history is crucial to understanding Rohani’s promises of “moderation” and recalibrating antagonistic relations with the West. In the U.S. and European capitals, skepticism about an overnight transformation runs deep. The P5+1 group (the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany) has been engaged with Iran for 1.5 years – mostly fruitlessly. Rohani pledged that Iran will be “more dynamic” in P5+1 talks and says it is ready for “more transparency” to ease Western fears it seeks a nuclear weapon. But he has also made clear that Iran’s fundamental demands – recognition of its “right” to peaceful nuclear enrichment and lifting nuclear-related sanctions – have not budged. Presidents do not trump Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s decisions on the nuclear file, but they set a tone. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s provocative rhetoric virtually dared world powers to pile on sanctions, and current nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili has been criticized as inflexible. … in a 2004 speech to Iran’s Supreme Cultural Revolution Council, Rohani described how during earlier negotiations Iran was simultaneously expanding its uranium conversion work. “While we were talking with the Europeans in Tehran, we were installing equipment in parts of the facility in Isfahan,” he said. “By creating a calm environment, we were able to complete the work in Isfahan.” He also spoke then about the depth of mutual mistrust: “They think we are out to dupe them, and we think in the same way – that they want to trick and cheat us. Therefore, we should build trust, step by step and in practice.” Rohani will almost certainly choose a new nuclear negotiator to replace Jalili, after the criticisms leveled at the current team. Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, a former head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran who has a PhD in nuclear engineering from MIT, is reportedly on the shortlist. Yet P5+1 negotiators are unlikely to be uniformly reassured. Like other Iranian officials, Rohani has publicly rejected nuclear weapons, but speaks strongly about Iran’s right to nuclear energy. After so many years grappling with the nuclear issue, including writing his own 1,200-page memoir on Iran’s nuclear diplomacy, Rohani’s views are relatively well known. “If one day we are able to complete the [nuclear] fuel cycle and the world sees that it has no choice, that we do posses the technology, then the situation will be different,” Rohani said, according to a September 2005 transcript by the quarterly journal of Iran’s Center for Strategic Research, the Expediency Council think tank of which Rohani has been director since 1992.