WORLD JEWISH DAILY
8:39 AM on Friday, September 27, 2013 - Tishrei 23, 5774
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif appears to have succeeded in buying significant time for Iran to continue its nuclear program.
The Times of Israel reported Friday that following a meeting between Zarif and several top diplomats, including a sidebar with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the foreign minister stated,
We agreed to jump-start the process so that we could move forward with a view to agreeing first on the parameters of the end game… and move toward finalizing it hopefully within a year’s time.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Iran is, at best, half a year away from enriching enough uranium to build a nuclear weapons. He has said that he will not allow the Iranian nuclear program to continue beyond this point.
It seems, then, that Iran's recent charm offensive has succeeded in buying the country enough time to achieve nuclear capability, should it choose to do so. Buy spinning this as a "jump-start," Zarif has positioned this to look like a concession on Iran's part - an intelligent if dishonest move.
Thus far, Iran appears to have achieved what it set out to do when it embarked on its current diplomatic push, combined with an intense propaganda campaign by President Hassan Rouhani.
Email to a friend, Share on Facebook, Share on Twitter, and more: