Could Have Been Avoided

Peter Oborne writes:

In essence, there are two components to the deal struck between Iran and America in the early hours of Sunday morning in Geneva.

On the one hand the US has tacitly acknowledged the Iranian right to enrich uranium. In return the Iranians have allowed the IAEA virtually unlimited access, thus ensuring that no nuclear material can be diverted for military purposes.

It is a development that should be welcomed by all sensible people.

But let’s not forget that the deal that was agreed yesterday is in fundamentals identical to the one offered by the Iranians during the last set of negotiations in 2005.

President Rouhani was then the chief Iranian negotiator and John Sawers (now head of MI6) was the chief British negotiator. At a meeting on 23rd March 2005 at the Quai d’Orsay in Paris, Mohammed Zarif, now Iranian foreign minister, offered to put limits on Iranian enrichment, renounce nuclear weapons and allow round-the-clock IAEA inspection at its enrichment plants in return for Iranian development of centrifuge enrichment technology.

It was an incredibly generous offer. But when Sawers took it back to London it was blocked by Tony Blair, acting on the orders of George W Bush. At that time, the US wouldn’t tolerate the operation of even one centrifuge in Iran. Now, when around 19,000 centrifuges have been installed, the US has bowed to the inevitable.

In other words, all the pain and agony of the last eight years could have been avoided if only the Iranian offer had not been blocked by Britain and the United States.