Former Iranian Negotiator Faults His Nation's Nuclear Diplomacy
Iran undercut its own negotiators by withholding from them key details of its nuclear program, according to a new book by a former senior Iranian diplomat. Barbara Slavin writes that the book makes the failed diplomacy of the past decade easier to understand, and concludes that the key is to improve US-Iran relations.
Iran undercut its own negotiators by withholding from them key details of its nuclear program, according to a new book by a former senior Iranian diplomat.
The book, Iranian Nuclear Crisis: A Memoir by Seyed Hossein Mousavian, reveals nuggets about Iran’s nuclear diplomacy and internal politics that make the failed diplomacy of the past decade easier to understand — and do not portend well for the future.
A top negotiator with the Europeans from 2003-2005, Mousavian notes that Iranian negotiators in 2003 did not know that Iran had obtained from Pakistan drawings for advanced centrifuges known as P-2s along with less sophisticated technology.
“Once again, Iran was acknowledging facts after they had been discovered by others,” Mousavian writes of what happened after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) revealed the P-2 drawings. “I more than once heard important news for the first time from IAEA officials or the foreign media and then had to work on reformulating plans to manage the crises that the news gave rise to.”
