Iran’s Hard Talk Softens; Ready for 2nd Round with the West

ABC's Lara Setrakian reports from Dubai: Iran and Western powers ended a meeting in Geneva by agreeing to meet again. It was a qualified success after Western analysts had doomed prospects of a breakthrough, instead saying the best possible outcome from the talks would be more talks, in a series that would maybe someday reach a potential deal. Even the head of the US delegation, Undersecretary of State Richard Burns, sounded dour going into the meeting. In contrast Iran seemed surprisingly upbeat going into the talks. Lead negotiator Saeed Jalili said he is looking for “friendship and interaction,” and was ready for long-term engagement “should the talks bear fruit,” according to Iran’s PressTV.  Speaker Ali Larijani of Iran’s parliament, the Majles, said Iran was taking a “positive approach, while President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Geneva a chance for “change” (though alluding to change from the West, not from his own government).

That’s happy talk given the furore of the past week. Last Friday’s revelation of a new nuclear plant near Iran’s holy city of Qom undermined early confidence-building (pro-regime commentators called it “Obama’s pretext to attack Iran”). Over the weekend Iran’s test launch of ballistic missiles, an act normally seen as a sign of aggression, raised global alarms. The Obama administration may have paused talk of new sanctions for a day, but on the wings is a strict package to punish ongoing enrichment. By Wednesday night their contrast sounded clear through to Tehran. A state television channel aired a program called, “Geneva's talks between Iranian optimism and Western pessimism." One of the guests decried the West’s “logic of failure,” saying that Iranians are "coming to the talks with open minds…[while] the US is under Zionist pressure to work on failing these talks.” One reason Iran might feel good about talks on its nuclear program: Iran doesn’t think they’re about its nuclear program. Iran’s officials have called nuclear program a “case closed,” despite unanswered questions and ongoing fears it is pursuing a nuclear bomb. Iran’s conservative Javan newspaper wrote: "the U.S. will try to shift the discussion to Iran's nuclear file, but as this matter is a red line for Iran, Tehran will not accept it." Instead, Iran claims the talks are based on its package of proposals, a verbose document that called for a reordering of the global power structure and made no hint of nuclear concessions. Another reason for the diverging East-West view: each side plays to different audience. For Ahmadinejad’s government, still dogged by protests over the June election, Geneva is a welcome distraction. The embattled president does well to look like he’s cooperating with the global talks – that way if new sanctions come down, he can claim they’re not his fault. In the West, leaders want to manage expectations – if the talks go nowhere, they’ll want to claim it’s not their fault.  That’s part of why the same talks look so different from two directions. The test is whether, when, and how their views will meet in the middle.