{"id":19152,"date":"2013-11-25T16:13:49","date_gmt":"2013-11-25T23:13:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=19152"},"modified":"2013-11-25T16:13:49","modified_gmt":"2013-11-25T23:13:49","slug":"us-and-iran-held-secret-talks-on-nuclear-deal-for-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=19152","title":{"rendered":"US and Iran held secret talks on nuclear deal for a year"},"content":{"rendered":"

US and Iran held secret talks on nuclear deal for a year<\/strong>
\n24 November, 2013 – The National<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON – The United States and Iran secretly engaged in a series of high-level, face-to-face talks over the past year, in a high-stakes diplomatic gamble that paved the way for the historic deal sealed early yesterday in Geneva aimed at slowing Tehran\u2019s nuclear programme.<\/p>\n

The discussions, held in Oman and elsewhere, were kept hidden even from America\u2019s closest friends, including its negotiating partners and Israel, until two months ago. The secret discussions may explain how the nuclear accord appeared to come together so quickly after years of stalemate and fierce hostility between Iran and the West.<\/p>\n

But the secrecy of the talks may also explain some of the tensions between the US and France, which earlier this month balked at a proposed deal, and with Israel, which is furious about the agreement.<\/p>\n

President Barack Obama personally authorised the talks as part of his effort \u2013 promised in his first inaugural address \u2013 to reach out to a country the State Department designates as the world\u2019s most active state sponsor of terrorism.<\/p>\n

The last four clandestine meetings, held since Iran\u2019s reform-minded President Hassan Rouhani was inaugurated in August, produced much of the agreement later hammered out in negotiations in Geneva among the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China, Germany and Iran, said three senior administration officials.<\/p>\n

At the president\u2019s direction, the United States began a tentative outreach shortly after Mr Obama\u2019s inauguration in January 2009. Mr Obama and Iran\u2019s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, exchanged letters, but the engagement yielded no results.<\/p>\n

That outreach was hampered by Iran\u2019s hardline former president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, who was re-elected in a disputed vote in June of that year. The next month, relations seemed at another low when Iran detained three American hikers who had strayed across the Iranian border from Iraq.<\/p>\n

…more<\/a><\/p>\n

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US and Iran held secret talks on nuclear deal for a year 24 November, 2013 – The National WASHINGTON – The United States and Iran secretly engaged in a series of high-level, face-to-face talks over the past year, in a high-stakes diplomatic gamble that paved the way for the historic deal sealed early yesterday in more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[4166],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19152"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19152"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19153,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19152\/revisions\/19153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}