Fatman: Implosion Type Nuke
The secret, one-on-one nuclear negotiations President Barack Obama launched with Iran have run into a blank wall. A senior Iranian team member, Mostafa Dolatyar, said Friday, Dec. 14 in New Delhi that the diplomatic process for solving the nuclear issue with Iran was in effect going nowhere, because the demand that Tehran halt its 20-percent enrichment of uranium “doesn’t make sense.”
He went on to say: “They [the world powers] have made certain connections with purely technical issues and something purely political. In so far as this is the mentality and this is the approach from 5 + 1 (the Six World Powers) – or whatever else you call it – definitely there is no end for this game.”
DEBKAfile: The phrase “or whatever else you call it” may be taken as Iran’s first veiled reference to the direct talks with Washington that were launched Dec. 1 in the Swiss town of Lausanne.
Mostafa Dolatyar is not just a faceless official. He is head of the Iranian foreign ministry’s think tank, the Institute for Political and International Studies, as well as a senior member of the Iranian team facing US negotiators in Lausanne. His remarks were undoubtedly authorized by the office of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who, through him, posted a message to Washington: If the enrichment suspension demand stands, the game’s over.
After more than 15 years of on-and-off, largely aimless, nuclear diplomacy with world powers and evasive tactics with the UN nuclear agency, Tehran is for the first time showing signs of impatience and not just is usual disdain. This is because two things have changed:
