Binyamin Netanyahu has denounced an agreement being negotiated in Switzerland on Iran’s nuclear programme, saying it was “even worse” than Israel had feared.
According to the Haaretz news website, the Israeli prime minister claimed there was an “Iran-Lausanne-Yemen” axis, linking the venue for the nuclear talks with Iranian backing for Houthi rebels in Yemen, and said the deal posed a threat to humanity that must be stopped.
“I am deeply troubled by the emerging agreement with Iran in the nuclear talks,” said Netanyahu at the start of a cabinet meeting on Sunday. “The agreement confirms all of our fears and even worse.”
Netanyahu made his remarks as negotiations in Lausanne approached the 31 March deadline for an understanding on the framework for a deal, and took on a new intensity. The UK foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, arrived at the Swiss lakeside town on Sunday evening to join the US secretary of state, John Kerry, and foreign ministers from Iran, France, Germany and China, as well as the EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini.
Kerry cancelled a flight to Boston, where he had been due to attend a memorial ceremony for his late friend, senator Edward Kennedy, on Monday. The French and German foreign ministers, Laurent Fabius and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, postponed a trip to Astana, Kazakhstan, where they had been due to take part in negotiations on Ukraine with Russian officials.
“A comprehensive nuclear deal with Iran is in all our interests. It is the best way of ensuring Iran does not develop a nuclear weapons capability. That is why the UK is putting such extensive effort into these negotiations,” Hammond said on arrival. “Both sides now need to work intensively to bridge the remaining differences. That will mean some tough choices if we are to reach what would be a historic deal.”
Asked if he was optimistic about the prospects of an agreement, Lavrov replied: “I am not paid to be optimistic.”
The diplomats have until the Tuesday night deadline for a framework agreement. Negotiators would then have three more months to draft technical annexes to complete the deal.
A senior US official predicted that the talks could go all the way to the Tuesday deadline, adding the unresolved issues included the duration of any agreement, between 11 and 15 years, how much development work on centrifuges Iran could carry out over the lifetime of the deal, and the phased lifting of UN security council sanctions.
Kerry has to present specific details to Congress to fend off new sanctions on Iran. Iranian officials do not want a formal accord, in part because the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, decreed last month that there could be only a signed agreement at the very end of the process.
The Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said there was a danger that any agreed text would become a target for opponents of any deal. “My fear is a two-page document is a paper tiger. Anybody can kill it,” Zarif told NBC News.
A possible solution is for the foreign ministers to make a joint declaration in Lausanne or in nearby Geneva, to be followed by the publication of an informal “factsheet” of agreed points, that could be officially deniable in Tehran. A former state department official said it could take several days to draft this, so experts could stay behind after the foreign ministers leave, to work on the document before Congress reconvenes in mid-April.
However, a European official at the talks said they were still mired in issues of substance, and had yet to tackle differences over presentation.
“We will remain at the negotiation table for however long it takes to get a good deal,” the Iranian deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi. He added: “All the sides are strongly motivated to reach a compromise.”
